


The Failpire Chronicles

by airgeer



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst and Humor, Character Turned Into Vampire, Dark Comedy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-17 11:16:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airgeer/pseuds/airgeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things that Kurt thought he’d be doing by 25: Broadway, married, etc, etc. Things that he was doing at seventeen: Having his throat torn out by his recently murdered boyfriend and waking up a vampire. Yay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set towards the end of Season 3, though the timeline isn't specified. Also, it's a WIP, with sporadic updates. <3

* * *

 

Blaine was dead.

Kurt couldn’t process it. He’d dropped him off on their way home from a date three days ago, and he’d watched Blaine go up the walkway to his house, and waited until he was safely inside, and now he was gone.

Kurt had been curious when he hadn’t answered his texts that night, then a little mad when he still didn’t the following morning. He’d driven over to pick him up for school anyway though, of course, but instead of an apologetic Blaine who’d lost his phone charger, he’d found Blaine’s body just inside the front door, his throat torn open and his face spattered with blood.

It had been the worst moment of his life.

Blaine’s parents had been out of town, making Kurt the last person to see Blaine alive except for whoever had… had done  _that_. He could barely remember the police questioning him, Carole sitting beside him and holding his hand while he stammered his way through answers to questions he couldn’t focus on and wishing his dad could get back from DC faster. He’d been vindicated by his On-Star data that clearly showed he’d been at Blaine’s house for under two minutes on the way home, but it wasn’t any kind of comfort when every time he closed his eyes he saw Blaine’s dead, discoloured eyes staring up at him.

They’d said that it was a calculated blitz attack, and Blaine probably hadn’t known he was in danger until it was too late. They’d said he’d died quickly, but Kurt couldn’t stop thinking back to Blaine’s flayed open throat and the puddle of blood, the pale cast to his skin, and the mercy of a fast death seemed insignificant next to the brutality of it.

And then Blaine showed up at his window.

~*~

Kurt had been half-heartedly going through his exercise routine in a vain attempt to distract himself when he heard the tapping. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his hoodie sleeve and readjusted his headband, wondering vaguely what Rachel was doing climbing up to his window. She was allowed to use the front door, and Kurt didn’t think she and Finn were fighting at the moment. No one was fighting, not anymore.

He tugged the curtain back, a mocking comment at the ready, only to freeze in shock. Blaine smiled and waved at him through the glass, and he heard his hand hit his thigh with a muted slap as he let it drop.

There was a moment of stunned silence as they stared at each other, Blaine with a faint smile on his face, and Kurt with his jaw slack. When he had regained enough self control to move again, Kurt slid the window up and stared some more. “Blaine?” he croaked, his voice uncooperative.

“Hi honey,” Blaine said with a faint smile, clinging to the windowsill. “How are you?”

“You’re dead,” Kurt said, every other word in his extensive vocabulary failing him. “You’re  _dead_.”

“I don’t think I…” Blaine said slowly, trailing off and seeming to change his mind, starting again with, “Can I come in?”

Kurt nodded, unable to speak. Blaine pulled himself in through the window, wearing a too large t-shirt and and sweat pants. Kurt couldn’t even wonder about his clothes, trying to reconcile what he knew ( _Blaine was dead there was so much blood I saw it his body is in the_ morgue) with what he was seeing ( _Blaine was right here he was talking he was breathing_ -

No, Blaine wasn’t breathing. Or he was barely breathing, until he sucked in a deep breath through his nose and his pupils dilated until there was only a hazel rim around huge black pupils. “You smell so good, Kurt,” he whispered.

“I was working out,” he said dumbly. Every instinct he had, sharpened by years of slushies and dumpster tosses, was screaming danger at him, but it was  _Blaine_. “You were dead. I saw you.”

“I don’t think I’m dead, I’m just really…really  _hungry_ ,” Blaine whispered. “Sebastian said that I had to come up here and ask you if I could come in, and then I would know what to do, but I don’t.”

“Sebastian?” Kurt asked, feeling his face contort in confusion. He rushed to the window and poked his head out. A tall, gawky figure waved up at him from the sidewalk. Even from the distance, Kurt could see his unpleasant smile, illuminated by streetlights. He closed the window most of the way and pulled the curtain, not wanting Sebastian to get any ideas about being welcome in his room. “What’s going  _on_ , Blaine? I saw your body, there was blood everywhere, how is this  _happening_?” His voice was getting high and hysterical, and he cut himself off when Blaine blinked at him, confusion all over his face.

“I don’t know.” Blaine looked woozy, and Kurt hurried back over to him, putting a hand under each of his elbows.

“Okay, it’s okay, we’ll set you down, I’ll go get Carole, it’ll be okay, sweetie-” Kurt broke off into a grunt as Blaine moved faster than his eye could follow, driving him back onto the bed and straddling him, pinning his arms to one side by the wrists. Kurt tried to pull free, but Blaine was strong, so much stronger than he should be, and he couldn’t move at all, his hips squeezed tight by Blaine’s thighs.

Kurt looked up into Blaine’s eyes and saw a terrifying, inhuman vacancy, all the warmth in his face replaced by a desperate hunger. He opened his mouth to scream and suddenly there was a hand there, wrenching his head up and to the side painfully. The strain in his neck was nothing though, not when compared to the sensation of sharp fangs ripping into his exposed throat just below his jaw, digging deep and tearing down almost to his collarbone.

The pain was horrible, but dulled almost immediately as Kurt felt a faint pressure on his mind, soothing and familiar and Blaine-like even though it didn’t make any sense. His breath slowed from the panicked rate he’d had before the bite, burbling and wheezing out of his throat. He felt Blaine’s tongue lathe up his neck, irritating the edges of the wound, then latch on and begin to suck. His vision greyed out and he was lost in the horrifying, soothing sensation of Blaine taking long drags of his blood, readjusting and biting him again to keep him in place every couple of seconds.

Somewhere along the line, his fuzzy brain latched onto the cruel irony of someone who was terrified of fictional vampires being slaughtered like a feedlot animal by what was apparently a real one, one that had formerly been his boyfriend, no less, and refused to let go. His own blood was trickling down his throat, and his limbs were numb. Every breath he took tasted thick and coppery, and he could feel his mangled throat muscles contracting uselessly.

Blaine detached from his throat with one last tearing bite, and as soon as he was gone, the pain came roaring back full force. Kurt focused on the gurgling of his breath, counting his exhales, and then Blaine’s face appeared above his and there was a pressure on his neck that sent shocks of agony down into his toes.

Blaine was talking, low and soothing, and Kurt didn’t know why it was soothing when Blaine had probably just killed him, but it was. He blinked, and then Blaine was gone and Sam was there, looking scared.

Sam lips moved and “Don’t die, don’t die,” echoed in Kurt’s ears a moment later. Kurt stared up at him, trying to find the words or breath to reassure him, but they didn’t come. He shivered a little, and felt the curious sensation of his breathing stopping, but couldn’t bring himself to care.

His heart stuttered, vainly trying to keep working despite the lack of blood, but then it stalled as well, and didn’t start again. Everything faded to black soon after, and the last sensations he experienced before he died was the sound of a sobbing intake of breath somewhere above him and the feeling of a tear dripping onto his blood spattered cheek. Then there was nothing.

~*~

_Three days earlier_

Kurt waved and blew a kiss at him as Blaine turned to close the door, and Blaine returned the gesture, a huge smile on his face. He didn’t feel a presence until he’d already locked the door behind him, well-used to coming home to an empty house. He had his sweater half off when the floor creaked slightly behind him and he whirled around.

Sebastian looked down at him, a predatory smile on his face. “Blaine.”

In the moment that it would have taken to recover from the surprise of finding Sebastian in his front entryway, Blaine was pinned up against the door and Sebastian had his nose pressed up against his throat, breathing in deeply. “I’ve been waiting for _ever_  for this, Blaine, do you have any idea how hard it to wait when you just want to  _take_?”

Blaine shoved at Sebastian, trying to dislodge him, but he didn’t budge. “Let me  _go_ , Sebastian, what’s wrong with you?”

Sebastian grabbed his chin and tilted his head up, forcing him to look into his eyes. When Blaine’s gaze got caught on his mouth, something wasn’t right there, like his teeth were suddenly too big for his lips to cover, Sebastian jerked his head up. Once Sebastian caught his eyes, he couldn’t look away. “There we go,” he said soothingly. “Just keep looking into my eyes. You’re feeling a little calmer now, aren’t you?”

He was. Sebastian didn’t blink, holding his gaze and waiting until Blaine didn’t feel like moving anymore. He was fine where he was.

And then Sebastian opened his mouth, revealing enormous fangs, and tore out his throat.

~*~

Blaine woke up lying on grass in the dark, confused and disoriented and  _hungry_.

“About time,” a voice said from above him. Blaine craned his neck around to see Sebastian, plucking blades of grass with a bored expression on his face. A flood of memories came back to him in a rush, and he clapped a hand to his neck to find…smooth skin. No gaping wounds, no scars, just his throat.

“I think you took some bad shrooms or something,” he continued. “You’ve been laying here muttering about vampires for, like, three hours.”

Blaine squinted at him, trying to make sense of…well, trying to make sense of anything. He didn’t  _think_  he’d taken drugs, but it would explain a lot. He heaved himself upright, and a wave of dizziness sent him flopping back down.

“Whoa there, tiger,” Sebastian said. “Maybe don’t get up yet. How are you feeling?”

“…Hungry?” Blaine said, not really sure if he was. It didn’t feel like a physical hunger either, more of a need for  _something_ , but he didn’t know what. It distracted him, made it hard to think.

Sebastian studied his face for a moment, smiling, but not really in a nice way. “Yeah, I hear that. C’mon, let’s get you up. We’re not far from Kurt’s, I’ll leave you there.”

“Kurt?” Blaine repeated, feeling slow and sluggish. There was something about Kurt tickling at the back of mind, like he desperately wanted him but in a different way than before.

“Yeah, Kurt, remember him? That guy, okay, that sort of guy that you spend a lot of time with? I’m taking you to his house, where he’ll take care of you.” Sebastian reached down and grabbed his arm, hoisting him up. Blaine staggered and nearly fell again, but Sebastian held him steady.

“Kurt’s a guy,” Blaine protested, as Sebastian began to steer him towards the street, illuminated by streetlights.

“Yeah, okay. Quiet time now.”

Blaine fell silent and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Walking got easier the more he did it, like he needed to relearn the motions, or he’d like he’d been in bed sick for a while and just gotten up. He felt stranger and stranger the longer they walked though, like his body was moving independently of his control and he was just a passenger along for the ride. The odd hunger he’d noticed as soon as he’d woken up grew as well, until he couldn’t focus on anything else. Sebastian had to drag him to a stop out front of Kurt’s house.

Kurt’s bedroom light was on, which meant he was in there. Blaine caught a faint scent on the nighttime breeze, delicious and intoxicating, and craned his neck up to catch a deeper whiff.

“There you go,” Sebastian said. “I knew you’d like that. Do you want it?” Blaine was nodding before he’d even registered the question, and Sebastian had to wrap an arm around his waist to hold him back. “Don’t use the front door. It’s in Kurt’s room, you can just climb right up that tree and then you need to ask him if you can come in, okay? Make sure you do that. Once you’re in, you’ll know what to do.”

“What are you talking about?” Blaine asked hazily, caught up in the scent.

“Nothing,” Sebastian said quickly. “You just go on up there, okay? And make sure you ask for permission to come in.” He gave Blaine a quick shove toward the house, and Blaine went along as if by instinct, climbing up the tree that stood beside the house and crawling along the branches until he could reach out and tap on Kurt’s window.

Everything that happened after Blaine slid in the window was a blur of scent and blood and screaming, until the haze of hunger eased and he realized with crystal clarity that his teeth were sunk deep into his boyfriend’s throat and he had a mouthful of his blood. He jerked away, spitting out the blood, and wiped his mouth roughly with his bare arm. He twitched his arm from his mouth with a start as pain lanced through him, staring at his arm as blood welled up the long gash along the underside of it and began to trickle. He didn’t understand. His teeth couldn’t be that sharp.

Kurt let out a tiny burble that broke through the fog of confusion that had started to descend on him. Kurt’s throat was torn open, blood rhythmically but weakly spurting out of severed arteries, and air bubbling out through the pooling blood.

He didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t a tiny cut that he could put pressure on to stop the bleeding and it would be okay. Kurt’s throat was  _gone_. He was staring up at the ceiling, his desperate burbling breaths getting weaker and weaker, and Blaine had done that. He’d done that.

He reached out slowly, shying away from touching the mess that was Kurt’s neck, and cupped his cheek. He grabbed Kurt’s blanket with his other hand and pressed it up against his neck, knowing that it was useless. As he leaned forward, the scent of blood hit him hard, and he was bent halfway over to lap at Kurt’s bloody throat before he realized what he was doing.

Blaine froze and jerked himself upright, determinedly breathing through his mouth, but that just made it worse. He could  _taste_  the blood on the air, and he wanted it, he wanted it so badly. He closed his eyes and tried not to breath at all, forcing himself to stop. He opened his eyes again and looked down at Kurt, who was staring up at him now, a kind of dull awareness on his face behind the pain.

“Shh,” he whispered, “It’s okay, you’re fine, shh.” His voice broke, and he could feel tears tracking down his cheeks through the blood that he’d smeared up it tearing at Kurt’s flesh. Kurt’s eyes tracked Blaine as he moved, unable to hold himself still, and the spaces between his weak little inhales got longer every time. Blaine realized suddenly that the blood from the long cut he’d accidentally made along his arm was running down and into Kurt’s mouth, and he hurriedly adjusted his hand so that it ran onto the mattress instead.

“Blaine,” Sebastian hissed from the window. “Blaine, come here.”

Blaine tore his gaze away from Kurt to look at him disbelievingly. “You did this to me,” he accused. “You lied, I wasn’t on drugs, you did this to me and you knew I would do it to him.”

“Well, it’s a little different this time,” Sebastian said calmly. “You came back. He’s just going to die. Unless you come and take this from me, that is. It’s his only chance.” Sebastian held up a glass vial, full of what was presumably blood. Blaine hesitated, looking back down at Kurt, whose eyes had slid shut. “Come on, Blaine,” Sebastian said, more impatiently. “Do you want him to live or not? I can’t come in there, not without an invitation.”

Blaine leapt off the bed and ran to the window, holding his hand out for the vial. Instead of handing it to him though, Sebastian grabbed his hand and pulled him through the window, letting him fall the two stories to the ground headfirst. Blaine didn’t have a chance to scream before he hit the ground hard, somehow surviving the impact, and Sebastian was on him before he could regain his bearings, turning him over and throwing him over his shoulders, taking off at a run.

“Kurt…” Blaine mumbled through the pounding in his head.

“Come on, Blaine, I hate that guy. Did you really think I would ever save his life? I just needed you to come over to me so I could get you out of there. He’s dead by now.” Sebastian tightened his grip on Blaine’s arms and knees when he thrashed to get loose, but Blaine kept fighting. He had to get down, Kurt was back there and he was scared and dying and alone and it was Blaine’s fault. “Stop it!” Sebastian said, shaking Blaine back and forth. “You won’t even remember him in a couple years, don’t be such a pussy. We’ll be laughing at how mad you’re getting over a stupid human in a few decades.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Blaine snarled, futilely trying to kick at Sebastian. Sebastian simply readjusted his grip and continued running for long enough that Blaine was taken by surprise when Sebastian jerked to a stop, throwing him to the ground. Blaine sat up quickly and tried to bite at Sebastian’s hand when he flipped him over to lie flat on his belly.

“Well, aren’t you an angry little baby vampire?” Sebastian crooned mockingly, holding Blaine’s chest to the ground with his foot. “Aren’t you getting sleepy yet? That was an awfully big meal you just had.”

Blaine clawed at Sebastian’s leg and screamed in frustration as he struggled futilely to get away. His voice echoed oddly, and he craned his neck to see the shadows of trees. Sebastian leaned his weight onto his foot a little more, and Blaine threw himself harder into his efforts to escape. “Let  _go_  of me,” he panted as his arms got heavier and harder to move. “Stop it.”

Sebastian removed his foot unexpectedly when Blaine finally had to relax slightly, unable to hold himself tense any longer, only to grab the collar of the loose, bloody t-shirt Blaine was wearing and start dragging him through the trees.

 

Blaine gave up struggling. Kurt was dead, there was no way he had survived, and he was so tired. He’d been studiously avoiding thinking about the uncomfortably full feeling in his gut, and if that, if  _Kurt_ , had been what he’d been hungry for, he wished that he’d just found the nearest overpass instead, but it made him feel warm and sated and sleepy, and the disconnect between his mind and body was horrifying.

Sebastian slung him over his shoulder again to bring him over the fence and into the backyard of a house he didn’t recognize. Blaine was dozing off by the time Sebastian left him on a soft bed in a small, windowless room and left, closing and locking the heavy door behind him.

Blaine rolled over on his side and let himself fall asleep, hoping that he would wake up at home and everything would be okay, and wondering when he’d started crying again.

~*~

It was dark and cool when Kurt woke up. There wasn’t a shred of light anywhere, and when he raised a shaking hand to his throat, it brushed against a hard surface just above him. He was covered by a sheet, he realized at the faint rustle of fabric, and completely naked. He threw his hands out the side, banging them painfully against cold metal walls, only inches away from his sides.

He slid his stinging hands up the walls, reaching above his head, and found more cold metal. He remembered bleeding, remembered Blaine impossibly vicious and inhuman, remembered a strange, awful taste in his mouth that had overpowered the taste of his own blood as Blaine had leaned over him. He had died. He remembered dying as he stared up at Sam. There was no question.

He’d been killed by his dead vampire boyfriend, and now he was in a tiny metal box.

Kurt almost laughed at how ridiculous the whole thing was. Vampires weren’t real, and yet Blaine had died from massive blood loss, and there hadn’t been enough blood when Kurt had found his body, and whoever had done it had bitten open his neck. And then his dead boyfriend had shown up at his bedroom window, and like an  _idiot_  Kurt had let him in and now Kurt was dead. Only not quite.

He was in a sealed box though, and he felt a gnawing hunger that only grew the longer he stayed still.

Blaine’s voice echoed in his ears.  _“I don’t think I’m dead, I’m just really…really_ hungry _.”_

Okay. So he probably had murdering someone in the near future to look forward to. Charming. Well, if he ever got out of the box, he’d probably be committing murder. Maybe they knew that he would wake up a monster and had locked him up to keep from hurting anyone.

Kurt resisted banging on the sides of the box and trying to attract attention for as long as he could, but as time crawled by the hunger started to become desperate and all-consuming, and he needed out, he needed out, he needed-

He was banging on the walls without being conscious of it, filled with raw, primal need and instinct. A rush of fresh air and light announced the removal of the top of the box, and he tipped his face towards it, closing his eyes as the light stung them.

The shelf he hadn’t realized he was laying on rolled out easily, and Kurt slitted his eyes open to see an older woman staring down at him with a stunned expression on her face. He could hear her heart pounding and the smooth rush of blood in her veins, smell the adrenaline coming off of her, and he knew that he’d scared her before his eyes had even refocused.

“You’re…” she started, but trailed off, like she couldn’t find the words. “How?”

“I don’t feel well,” Kurt whispered. The woman reached out for him, and Kurt flinched away. The blood pounded in her veins, and he wanted it, he wanted to reach and tear and  _suck_  but he couldn’t, he couldn’t do that. It was gross and wrong and awful and he couldn’t but he was having a hard time remembering why, exactly, it was so wrong.

“Okay, okay,” she said, voice rising to a near-hysterical pitch. “I’m going to call someone for help, okay? Just stay here, I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared from his field of view, though her scent lingered, and Kurt’s head cleared a little, enough that he knew he had to go. He rolled off the shelf, hitting the cold floor with a quiet thud, then stood up, wrapping the sheet around himself.

He was in a morgue. Any lingering doubts that he had indeed been dead went flying out of his mind. The woman was looking straight at him, her eyes wide as she frantically spoke into her desk phone. “You think I’m joking? He’s standing up now, and he doesn’t even look injured.” To him, she said, “Sit back down, sweetie, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

Kurt looked past her to the door, and then back at her. He tore his eyes away from the flutter of her throat with effort, cringing with revulsion at himself, and made a break for the door.

The woman squawked with surprise and chased after him, but Kurt was faster despite his wooziness and the desperate urge to turn himself around and throw himself at her throat mouth first, and he put distance between them quickly. He dodged the man in the white coat coming down the corridor and threw himself around the corner, finding himself in what looked like a utility corridor. He dashed down it, passing electrical panels and boilers, until he rounded a corner and came to a door marked with stairs. He opened it as quietly as he could and stepped through, closing it silently behind him.

Kurt took a deep breath. He could still hear the sounds of living all around him, but they were fainter, and the hunger had dug itself so deep into him that he didn’t think that it would ever leave again, but he could think again.

Blaine had done this to him, but he’d seemed confused. Well, Kurt amended, he’d seemed confused right up until he’d been holding Kurt down and tearing at his throat with his fangs. Sebastian, though. Sebastian had known exactly what was going on.

Foosteps echoed on the stairs below him, and Kurt knew that he had to run. He dashed up the stairs to a red ‘EXIT’ sign, hoping that it would be deserted. He hit the door at a run, bursting out into the darkness of a May night, and pulled the sheet tighter around himself. He looked down the alley he was standing in out to the road, where the odd car drove by, and then deeper into the alley, where everything was quiet.

It took him all of three seconds to decide which way he was going. He was naked, he was dead, and he had a craving for blood. It was time to hide, because there was no way he was blending in if they came after him, and he didn’t know where he could go.

He wanted to run home, head straight there and latch onto his dad and not deal with any of this, this hunger, dying, Blaine, Sebastian, anything. But what if he hurt his dad, or Carole, or Finn or Sam? He needed to think, needed to hide so no one could find him, he couldn’t hurt anyone.

Kurt turned away from the road and went deeper into the alley, sliding behind a dumpster and huddling into a corner as he pulled the sheet around himself more tightly. It was quiet out here, the sounds of people muffled by walls. He breathed deep, catching traces of the scent of people, and tried to calm down so he could think.

He was so hungry.  
  
~*~

End Part 1


	2. Chapter 2

Blaine lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, blinking every now and then.

 

Sebastian was leaving him alone, for the most part, but that had the downside of him being locked alone in a tiny room with nothing but his thoughts for long stretches of time. He didn’t know how long it’d been, but he thought he might lose his mind if he replayed what he had done to Kurt one more time.

 

To make matters worse, he was slowly getting hungry again. He spent a lot of time trying to sleep avoid dealing with it, but if he thought at all, he was too angry to sleep.

 

Sebastian was wary of getting too close to him, probably since Blaine attacked him every time he saw him. Come to think of it, that was probably why he was getting left alone. Sebastian was waiting for him to stop being angry.

 

Blaine’s lip curled as he remembered the feeling of his heart stopping, the sight of Kurt desperately trying to breathe as he died. Sebastian would be waiting a long time for that.

 

“I’m a vampire,” Blaine said, testing out the words. “Ugh.”

 

There was a clunk and a creak as the door was unlocked and opened slightly. Sebastian dropped a stack of newspapers just inside the room and smirked at him. “Thought you might like some reading material.”

 

Blaine jerked upright and charged at the door, grabbing at the handle and trying to pull it open, but Sebastian slammed it shut and locked it again. “No, Blaine,” he said, voice muffled by the door but the mocking tone of his voice still clearly audible. “Not until you learn to control yourself. You might hurt someone else, and wouldn’t that be tragic?”

 

“Not if it was you,” Blaine snarled. “Let me out and we’ll see how tragic I think that would be.”

 

Sebastian smacked his hand into the door, hard. “You couldn’t hurt me if you tried,” he said. “You’re all little and shit. Keep on telling yourself you can though. It’s kind of cute.”

 

“You say that, but I notice that you’ve still locked the door,” Blaine called. Sebastian didn’t answer, and Blaine heard him storm off. He looked down at the papers at his feet for the first time, and jerked backwards, surprised by a picture of himself grinning at him from the front page under a headline that read, “LOCAL TEEN MURDERED IN HOME”.

 

He stooped to pick it up, catching sight of the next paper underneath it, trumpeting “SECOND TEEN MURDERED”. Underneath it was a picture of him and Kurt, the caption reading “Victim Kurt Hummel, 17, pictured here with his boyfriend, Blaine Anderson, 16, also killed.”

 

Blaine pulled that paper aside. “QUESTIONS MOUNT IN MURDER CASE” was the next one, dated two days after the article about Kurt. He skimmed down the page and his eye caught on “Police have disclosed that Anderson’s remains were stolen from the morgue the night Hummel was murdered, and that they are pursuing a person of interest identified from security tapes. However, it was not announced if they believe that person to also be responsible for the killings.”

 

Blaine flipped that paper aside as well. It had to be Sebastian that they were looking for. The last paper was just bizarre. “MIRACLE IN MORGUE?” was written in enormous font, and a surveillance picture was underneath of it. It was grainy, but unmistakeable. Kurt stood beside a stretcher extending from what looked like a body locker in a morgue, clutching a sheet around himself.

 

Blaine scanned the article, an awful combination of horror that he had done precisely to Kurt what Sebastian had done to him and selfish hope that he would be able to see Kurt again warring within him. He had no way of knowing how old the paper was, but it said that Kurt had escaped, and that they were searching for him, and Blaine knew that he needed to go after him.

 

He banged at the door. “Sebastian, let me out!” he yelled as loud as he could. “Now!” He kicked hard at the door, but it barely budged.

 

“You read all those papers already?” Sebastian called through the door eventually, interrupting Blaine’s kicking. “Good job! Now, I have to go out and kill Kurt again, because it won’t do to have him wandering around by himself but I don’t want to have to feed both of you, so you just sit tight and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

 

Blaine threw himself into the door hard, and Sebastian laughed. “Every time you do that I have to add another month or so to how long I’m leaving you in there, Blaine. I think you should probably consider getting used to it.”

 

He laughed as he walked away, and Blaine attacked the door harder, clawing and punching at it. The door didn’t give, and he eventually slid down it, crying with frustration. The door was solid, and clearly so were the lock and hinges. He wasn’t getting out through there.

 

He took a moment to just breathe and try to think, but all that came to mind was Kurt as he’d last seen him, tears streaking down his face through the smeared blood as he struggled to breathe, and Sebastian hurting him the way Blaine had. The image had him flinging his fist in rage, but he missed the door and hit the wall instead. The drywall cracked under the force of the blow, and Blaine mentally kicked himself for not trying the walls sooner.

 

He made a hole in the wall easily enough, tearing off chunks of drywall and squeezing between the studs. Sebastian had clearly not thought his prison through that well. Once he was in the hallway, the house silent around him, he set off at a run, finding the back door of the house and letting himself out into the night.

 

~*~

 

Kurt didn’t stay behind the dumpster long. Uniformed police officers started pouring out of the building and calling his name, and he realized that he was behind the police station. Either way though, they had flashlights and every time he caught a whiff of human scent or the faint thudding of a heartbeat the urge to hunt and rip and tear came back full force.

 

He slunk deeper into the alley and climbed up a fire escape, surprising himself with how high he could jump to reach the ladder but almost losing his sheet in the process. The moon was full in the sky and he had a sudden hysterical thought that maybe he’d meet a werewolf, too. He had always come down more on the side of Jacob and Bella rather than Edward and Bella, though he supposed he wasn’t really Bella anymore, unless he counted creepy vampire Bella, and he really didn’t want to have a baby torn out of him.

 

“Get a grip, Kurt,” he whispered. He’d been feeling lightheaded with hunger almost since he woke up, but at least he hadn’t been wandering off on mental tangents before. “You need to find a place to go.”

 

He started off cautiously, picking his way across the roof and avoiding broken bottles and gravel. Seriously, Lima? It was a  _roof_ , why were there broken bottles? His bare feet were sore by the time he reached the other side of the building, and he stared down into the alley below, jerking back and dropping to lie flat on the roof when he noticed the two police officers with flashlights poking around.

 

“Nothing,” one of them reported, dropping their light to the ground to look at his partner. “This is insane. I was one of the first responders, I saw what happened to that kid. There’s no way he was like, only  _mostly_  dead or something.”

 

“Nice reference, but the body’s gone, and Amanda isn’t a liar,” the other said. “Let’s move on.”

 

The cops turned and left, and Kurt breathed a sigh of relief as the urge to leap down off the roof and attack disappeared. It wouldn’t do him any good to stay on the roof though, so he crept along the edge, looking for a way down so he could get over to the next building and up. Lima police didn’t have a helicopter, so he should be okay so long as he stayed as high as he could.

 

The sound of the door that presumably led down to the rest of the police headquarters opening caught his attention, and several uniformed officers came out onto the roof. The separation was significant, but if they thought to search that roof, they might come over to where he was and look too. The roofs weren’t as safe as he thought.

 

He realized too late that he was still standing and wrapped in a white sheet that stood out against the darkness of the night. “There!” one of the officers shouted, pointing directly at him. “Naked kid in a sheet, gotta be him.”

 

Another officer was talking into a radio already, and Kurt panicked. He was so hungry, the need was so strong now, that if they caught him he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop it. He looked down at the drop off of the side of the building and the lack of a ladder. He had to get away, the need to escape warring with the urge to turn and run at the cops, and he was trapped on the roof. There wasn’t time to get down in a safe way and still escape, and maybe the fall would keep him from hurting anyone, so he made a decision. He took a running start and propelled himself off the side of the building.

 

He hit the ground hard and bounced, feeling bones snapping out of place and muscles tearing. He screamed in pain, and then again in shock as he lay limply on the ground and  _felt_  his bones join back together and heal, leaving only the shadow of pain. He picked himself up and ran away, the cops that had just left the alley coming back into it and calling his name.

 

He lost himself in running, ignoring the pain in his feet in favour of desperately sprinting. The only thought in his head was to get away, and he was completely lost when he stopped outside a dilapidated building in a field with no recollection of how long he’d been running.

 

There were no people nearby, just tiny hints of human scent on the breeze, and Kurt let himself collapse with a huff, his muscles trembling with exertion as the stress of the run and his escape and his death caught up with him. The sheet pooled around him, and he sighed, not bothering to gather it up again.

 

He was tired, and hungry, but most of all he was scared. What was he supposed to do? Avoid people until he died of hunger? Would he even be able to do that? Or would whatever had taken over Blaine in his room take him too, forcing him to go in search of people and tear them apart?

 

Kurt shivered and pulled himself upright and into the tiny shack. The walls creaked alarmingly and his skin crawled at the thought of it, but he was out of sight. No one would find him there. He hoped.

 

~*~

 

Blaine wandered the streets, as inconspicuously as he could. It turned out that wasn’t terribly inconspicuously, since he looked like he’d escaped from some sort of institution and been in a fight, but at least he had shoes.

 

The scents and sounds of people was distracting, but not overpowering. He could still control himself. He could control himself, anyway, until he caught a scent that had engraved itself onto his brain. Kurt.

 

It was fresh, and Blaine followed it like a bloodhound, except with less pressing his face to the ground and more sprinting. He couldn’t hear or smell Sebastian nearby, but that probably didn’t mean much. The trail led to a familiar neighbourhood, Kurt’s neighbourhood, and Kurt standing outside his house, staring at it with a hungry expression.

 

“Kurt!” he nearly shouted it in relief, but remembered at the last instant to drop his voice down. His feet were bare, and he was wearing a pair of loose pants that were too long and pooled around his feet and a plain but ratty t-shirt. Blaine had never been so relieved in his life.

 

Kurt turned to him, confused and scared looking, and whispered, “Blaine?” Blaine nodded and stepped closer, and Kurt threw himself at him, wrapping his arms around him and letting out his breath in a sob. “I am so happy to see you,” he said.

 

“I’m sorry,” Blaine said. “Kurt, I am so sorry that I did this to you.”

 

“I get it,” he whispered. “Believe me, I get it. I need you to stop me, Blaine. I don’t want to be here but I couldn’t stop myself and I’m going to do it and I can’t.” Kurt took a step forward, towards the house, and Blaine realized what he was doing just in time to grab his arm and jerk him back bodily.

 

“Okay, yes,” he said. “We’ll go to the mall and get you some other clothes or something, okay? You just need to get a little further away and then we can figure something out.”

 

Kurt hissed at him, actually  _hissed_ , and tried to pull away. His nostrils were flaring, and Blaine knew that the scent must be driving him crazy. His pupils were huge, and Blaine remembered the feeling, how he’d been so hungry, so desperate, and Kurt had smelled so good. Kurt had been awake for at least a day too, and the hunger had had that much longer to build than it had for Blaine. There was no way that he was leaving voluntarily.

 

Kurt’s mouth began to distort as fangs extended, and Blaine knew he was out of time, that Kurt was going to attack him soon. He thanked whatever god there was for vampires that gave them superhuman strength, because there was no way Blaine of last week could have tossed a boy the size of Kurt Hummel over his shoulder and taken off running down the street. Of course, the Kurt Hummel of last week probably would have been just about as receptive to being carried as the vampire Kurt of the last day, but Blaine was still taken by surprise when Kurt stopped kicking abruptly and instead wriggled a little further down and sunk his fangs deep into Blaine’s ass with an angry growl.

 

“Jesus Christ!” Blaine yelped, losing his grip and unceremoniously dropping Kurt to the ground. “Shit, sorry, sorry, are you okay?” Kurt came up snapping, and Blaine was forced to pin him down to keep his nose attached to his face. “No, no, no, no,  _no_. Kurt, _stop_.” He flicked Kurt’s nose with his finger to try to get his attention, and Kurt stilled immediately, glaring up at him.

 

“Kurt?” Blaine said tentatively, unnerved by his cold, flat stare. “Are you mad?”

 

“No,” Kurt said, angrier than Blaine had ever seen him. “I am overjoyed that you’re holding me down and you  _flicked me in the nose_ , what the hell Blaine?”

 

“Well, you bit me! And then you tried to do it again, that really hurt! Why would you bite my ass?”

 

“You shouldn’t have picked me up, and then you dangled your ass right in front of my face. It’s  _ample_ , Blaine, what did you expect me to do?”

 

“Well, you were probably going to eat your dad! You asked me to stop you, I was just trying to help.” Blaine loosened his grip slightly, but Kurt didn’t move, looking suddenly confused.

 

“Oh. Yes. I did, didn’t I?” He let his head drop to the pavement. “Everything’s kind of blurry.”

 

He shut his eyes drowsily, and Blaine jerked in panic as he remembered Sebastian. “Kurt, don’t go to sleep, we have to hide. Sebastian’s coming after you, and probably me too now.”

 

Kurt wasn’t listening though. “I’m hungryyyyyy,” Kurt whined. “I want to eat, Blaine, why are you doing this to me?” He nibbled at his lip, fangs lengthening grotesquely and piercing the skin.

 

“Because you’ll hate yourself if I don’t.” He tightened his grip, watching as Kurt licked at the tiny spot of blood on his lips and shuddered. “Kurt, we have to go.”

 

He rolled off of Kurt, keeping a tight grip on one of his wrists. Kurt struggled to his feet and stood beside him. “I was hiding in a little house,” he said, lucidity returning. “In a field. We could maybe do that.”

 

“I found you by scent, so Sebastian can probably do the same,” Blaine said. “I think that we actually have to run and get really far away.”

 

“Where?” Kurt was picking at Blaine’s fingers on his wrist absently, trying to get him to release his grip.

 

“I don’t know yet,” Blaine said. “Anywhere? You also need something to eat sooner rather than later. I need you with me, not trying to escape.”

 

“I’m not trying to escape,” Kurt said indignantly. Blaine looked pointedly down at their hands, where Kurt was still trying to pry his fingers off. “Oh.” He stilled his hands with a visible effort, letting the free one fall back to his side.

 

“I don’t want this to happen to anyone else because of us,” Blaine said. Kurt nodded his head, agreeing. “Sebastian’s been here for months and months, and I didn’t hear about anyone dying. Blood must not be the only thing we can eat.”

 

“I’ve been drinking cow’s blood myself, mostly,” Sebastian called from behind them. “It’s kind of gross, but it keeps the government and the cops off my back.”

 

Blaine’s stomach dropped sickeningly, and he tugged at Kurt’s hand. “Run.” He took off, pulling Kurt behind him until Kurt got the message and ran himself.

 

Sebastian swore, and Blaine heard the pounding of his feet as he ran after them. He stole a glance backwards, expecting Sebastian to be catching up with them, only to see him stop suddenly, an odd expression on his face. Blaine didn’t stop to see why, pulling Kurt along until he finally stumbled. Blaine turned and caught him, holding him steady as his chest heaved desperately.

 

They’d made it to the outskirts of town, in an area that had been badly affected by the recession as prosperous businesses moved deeper into town and others relocated to it to wither and die. Many of the buildings were abandoned, and they could’ve hid there if Sebastian wasn’t after them. If Sebastian was still after them. Why had he stopped? He could’ve caught them easily, but he hadn’t even tried.

 

Kurt nuzzled his face into Blaine’s neck, sending a chill up his spine as he couldn’t help but picture the last time someone’s face had been that close to his neck. He reached up to gently move Kurt’s face away just as he nipped, his fangs scraping against the side of Blaine’s throat. Kurt growled at him again, and there was no trace of conscious thought left in his eyes when Blaine looked at him.

 

“Okay, I get it,” he said, one arm pinning Kurt against him and the other holding back his face as he tried to bite. He knew Kurt probably didn’t understand what he was saying, he was too far gone in need, but it was comforting to pretend he did. “You’re hungry, I get it, I need you to hold on just a little longer, Kurt,  _please_.”

 

Kurt blinked, and a little bit of him came back to the surface. “I need it,” he said. “Please, Blaine, let me go, I  _need_  it, I feel like I’m going to die.”

 

“You have to trust me,” Blaine said, holding Kurt tighter. “I’ll get you something you can eat, and you won’t hurt anyone, you just have to trust me.”

 

“Hm,” Kurt said, drifting away again and absently trying to push his face into Blaine’s throat again.

 

“Are you done running now?” Sebastian asked. “Seriously, Blaine, I’m trying to help you out here.”

 

Blaine whirled around, losing his grip on Kurt’s face as he did, and getting nipped sharply for his efforts. It took a tense moment of scrambling, but he got Kurt off of him, and glared at Sebastian. There was no way they were running again, no escape. “I’m not letting you touch him.”

 

“You couldn’t stop me,” Sebastian said. “I’m not sure how you got out, or even how you managed to accidentally make a lady-vampire when you had no idea what you were doing, but I’m tired of it, Blaine. You’re a lot less fun than I’d hoped.”

 

“Yeah, well you’re  _exactly_  as much fun as I expected,” Blaine shot back. Kurt squirmed suddenly, and Blaine had to readjust his grip.

 

“Oh,  _burn_ ,” Sebastian said sarcastically. “Anyway, yeah, I’m bored of you, so I’ve decided to stop protecting you. The FBI should be chasing you down anytime now. Have fun being poked and prodded in a lab!”

 

“Fuck you!” Blaine screamed, abruptly losing his composure. It’d been a rough week, he figured it had been a long time coming. Kurt stopped struggling, shocked by either the volume or the swearing, Blaine wasn’t sure which. “You don’t get to do this to people! You can’t just do this to me and pretend this is a game, you  _asshole_. What do you think this has done to my family, to Kurt’s family?”

 

“Don’t know, don’t care, and you don’t know either. They could be dancing up a storm. I mean, I would be, if I was related to Kurt.” Sebastian said, shrugging. “I suggest you leave the area though. Frankly, I’d be surprised if there weren’t already teams out looking for the two of you. And me, of course, but I’m a lot older and smarter than you and I won’t be getting caught.”

 

Blaine seethed, and Kurt hissed quietly in what Blaine thought was support, but turned out to be discomfort because Blaine had unconsciously tightened his grip on Kurt’s face. Blaine slackened his hold, and Kurt stayed still, not trying to bite any longer.

 

“Okay, so, bye Blaine, good luck hauling around that dead weight. I’ll see you never!” Sebastian waved brightly, and then turned and walked away, shaking with quiet amusement at his own joke. Blaine resisted the urge to chase after him and tear him apart, see how  _he_ liked it, but Kurt was starting to growl again, and he figured it was time to find some cows and see if he could get a rational Kurt back by feeding him blood. Blaine paused as the ridiculousness of the situation struck him suddenly, and it was only the thought of Kurt getting impatient and attacking him again that shook him out of it.

 

There were several misfires before he got Kurt moving in the right direction, further out of town, and he when he looked down at Kurt’s bare feet, slightly bloody and very abraded, Blaine gave up on leading him, taking the risk of hoisting him over his shoulders and carrying him.

 

“We’ll find you some shoes, okay? And then you can walk.” Kurt was completely silent, and it was making Blaine uneasy. At least when he was growling and hissing he could tell what was on Kurt’s mind. And yeah, his boyfriend wanting to tear people open with his teeth to drink their blood wasn’t exactly reassuring either, but not much had been in the last few days.

 

Blaine broke into a jog when they cleared city limits, hoping that he wouldn’t have go too far to find a cow. He felt a pang of guilt at the thought, but Sebastian hadn’t been killing cows, either, someone would’ve noticed, so there had to be a way to get what they needed without killing them.

 

He passed a wheat field, two barley fields, and a field of peas before he found a pasture with a herd of cattle visible in the distance. At least, that was what he guessed they were. Barley was a plant, probably.

 

Blaine looked at the barbed wire fence and grimaced at the idea of climbing over it with Kurt on his shoulders.  _Superhuman strength, Blaine_ , he reminded himself. He turned his back to the fence and set Kurt down on the other side of it easily. “Stay there, okay?” he said.

 

Kurt regarded him curiously, reminding Blaine of a cat whose owner had told it to stay. He seemed about as likely to do so as the cat too, so Blaine kept a hold on his arm with one hand and swung himself over the fence post with the other.

 

It was easier than it had ever been, and Blaine spared a fleeting mournful thought for how easy it would be to jump on pianos and couches now. Cooper would be so jea-

 

Blaine swiped furiously at the tears that had welled up. No, no, Cooper would not be jealous, because Blaine was dead, had died a messy death, and he was never going to see him again because he would probably do the same thing to him that he had done to Kurt. The idea of spending however long vampires lived with Cooper sent a chill up his spine, and had the benefit of drying his tears too.

 

Kurt had his face tilted up, and was sniffing at the air. Blaine sniffed as well, and smelled nothing but the cows on the breeze. Kurt seemed interested, but he wasn’t pulling as desperately as he had when it had been people, and he wasn’t trying to bite Blaine anymore either. Blaine would take that as a win.

 

They approached the cows slowly. Kurt squirmed when Blaine picked him up too much for Blaine to keep his grip, and his feet were already half-healed anyway.  _Score one for vampirism, I guess_ , Blaine thought, holding Kurt back from rushing at them and scaring them. He could hear their heartbeats, the rush of blood through their veins, but it wasn’t the same as hearing people. He wanted it, but he could hold himself back easily.

 

The cow that they singled out stood slightly apart from the herd, eyes closed as it slept. Kurt was growling again, and pulling at Blaine’s grip. He finally succeeded at pulling his arm free of Blaine’s grip, and was on the poor animal in a flash, biting deep into its neck and tearing.

 

Blaine had a split second of  _gross, gross, oh my god gross_ before the cow mooed loudly in anguish, waking up the rest of the herd, and the scent of fresh blood hit him.

 

~*~

 

“I’m not a very good vampire,” Blaine confessed.

 

“I noticed, actually,” Kurt said, shaking his hand to get some of the blood off. “The whole part where I was enthusiastically drinking the blood of a dying cow kind of speaks to how we’re not very good at this.”

 

“I was doing pretty good, actually,” Blaine said. “I got you away from people, didn’t I?”

 

“You did,” Kurt acknowledged. “I’m glad it wasn’t my dad. It’s just, that cow had a  _collar_ , Blaine. We ate someone’s pet cow. She had a  _name_!”

 

A tear traced down the blood on Kurt’s cheeks and Blaine was wiping it away before he remembered that he was covered in blood too. He chose not to mention the enormous bloody smear he’d added to. “Well, now we know that I’m not so good at resisting a fresh blood source, and we won’t make that mistake again, okay? I’m sure Bessie’s in a better place.”

 

“Blaine, that’s not actually a comforting thing to say to an atheist,” Kurt said flatly. They walked quietly for several long minutes. “Do you think my dad’s okay?”

 

Blaine chewed on his lip, trying to think of an answer. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “The newspaper I saw said that you ran away from the morgue on your own, and I have no idea how he would react to that.”

 

“Oh,” Kurt said, and then, “Where are we going?”

 

Blaine shrugged. “Where do you think we should go?”

 

“We need to find a place to hide,” Kurt said. “Sunlight hurts.”

 

“Really?” Blaine asked. “I thought it made vampires sparkle.”

 

“I thought so too, but I think that might only be in Twilight,” Kurt said. “Which sucks, because as much as the sun and I weren’t friends before, I am going to miss your tan.”

 

Blaine briefly considered leaning over to give him a peck on the cheek, but decided that it could wait until they were cleaner. Or at least drier, because he very much doubted that wherever they hid would have running water. Unless…

 

“We can go back to Lima,” he said. “That abandoned industrial strip would be a good place to hide for a while, and there might be water there so we can get some of the blood off.”

 

“Oh, good,” Kurt said, “I thought we were going to have to go around like this forever, and I’m getting really tired.”

 

Blaine suppressed a yawn. “Me too. I think it’s a feeding thing.”

 

They hopped the fence back to the road and started back towards Lima. By the time they were breaking the lock off of an abandoned warehouse, the eastern sky was lighting up and Blaine was just hoping that no one saw them. The streets were quiet this time of day, but not completely abandoned.

 

Blaine followed Kurt inside, their footsteps echoing loudly, and they collapsed against the door once it was shut, too sleepy to do anything else.

 

“Blaine, I’m messy,” Kurt protested drowsily as Blaine pulled him close, eyelids drifting shut despite the general grossness of the blood covering him.

 

“In a while,” Blaine said. “It’s time for sleep now.”

 

“Mmmm,” Kurt mumbled. Blaine was just drifting off when Kurt whispered, “I’m glad you’re not alone.”

 

“What?”

 

“To deal with this by yourself. I’m glad you don’t have to.” Kurt trailed off, limp and heavy where he was cuddled up to Blaine.

 

“I’m glad too,” Blaine said automatically. Then he thought about what he had just said and amended, “Except for the whole accidentally murdering my boyfriend and turning him into a bloodthirsty creature of the night thing. I really could’ve done without that.” Kurt didn’t answer, already asleep, and Blaine gave up, closing his eyes and drifting off.

 

~*~

 

End Part Two

 


	3. Chapter 3

Kurt’s left eye was glued shut.

 

It was an unpleasant thing to wake up to, and he disentangled his stiff fingers from Blaine’s shirt, trying not to shudder at the crackle as the fabric shifted. He touched his face, fingers and cheeks both rough with dried blood, and pressed at his shut eye, opening the right one as wide as he could. He could see dark stains on his cheek and nose, and a large flake dropped off as he crinkled his nose in disgust.

 

When he felt the first eyelash tear out, he stopped trying to open his eye and sat up. Blaine was still asleep, but stirred as Kurt moved, blinking his eyes open. Kurt noted with just a little bitterness that both of  _his_  eyes worked, despite his eyelashes being approximately as long as a make-up model’s and just as blood-encrusted as Kurt’s.

 

They were still in the warehouse, which was a relief, and the windows that Kurt could see were dark. Somehow he knew that it was dark again, rather than still, and that they’d been asleep for the entire day.

 

“How do you feel?” Blaine asked sleepily.

 

“I can’t get my eye open, and I need a shower more than I’ve ever needed anything,” Kurt said, rubbing dried blood off his arms.

 

“Let me see?” Blaine requested, leaning into Kurt and looking at his closed eye. “I think you’ve just got some blood stuck in there, I can...”

 

Kurt stiffened at the first swipe of a warm tongue across his eye. “Blaine, why are you licking me?”

 

Blaine froze and pulled back. “Um. It seemed like a good idea at the time?”

 

His eye was still stuck despite the licking, so he got to his feet and went in search of water. There was a shower in a change room, but the taps were rusty, and the water had long since been shut off. “So much for that,” he said, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. He knew that the malaise he was feeling was as much the haze of feeding wearing off as it was the disappointment of not getting a shower, but he’d felt like everything would seem better if he could just get  _clean_.

 

Blaine sat beside him and touched his hand. “We can find someplace else?”

 

“And what? Shower, wait until we have to kill something else and then repeat? I barely remember last night, Blaine. It’s all foggy, and all I know for sure is that if you hadn’t been there, I would’ve killed my dad. We’re  _monsters_.  How do we move on from that?” Tears were trickling down his cheeks now, he could feel the paths they were tracing through dried blood.

 

Blaine’s head landed on his shoulder heavily. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning his face into Kurt’s blood-encrusted shirt.

 

It had seemed so much better that morning, warm and safe and full and curled up against Blaine’s chest. He didn’t like  _why_  he’d been full, and the thought of it being comforting sent an unpleasant thrill up his spine, but it had been, all the same. “It’s not your fault, Blaine, don’t apologize,” Kurt said, stroking a hand over Blaine’s hair. “I just need a little time to be in despair, okay? I meant it when I said I was glad you weren’t alone. Can you imagine if you were stuck with Sebastian?”

 

He jiggled his shoulder a little, and Blaine looked up at him with a tiny, sad smile. “That would be awful,” he said. “Do you think he’d make me pop my collar? Or, like, maybe I’d have to start drinking my coffee like him.”

 

Kurt snickered a little at the image of Blaine wearing three shirts, all with popped collars. “How does he drink coffee?”

 

“He asked for a shot of Courvoisier. Like, he was trying to pass for a high school student, and he tried to get cognac in a coffee shop.” Blaine was grinning, but it faded quickly. “How old do you think he actually is?”

 

Kurt shrugged. “I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention when you were talking to him. Probably old enough to be really, really creepy.”

 

“He said he was a lot older than us, and the guy actually has his own house, so there’s that.” Blaine sat up straight with a surprised jerk. “He has his own house. He has his own house, and he kind of implied he was leaving town. We can go there until we figure out what to do.”

 

“How do you know he has his own house?” Kurt asked as Blaine clambered to his feet and dragged Kurt with him.

 

“I was locked up in it,” he said. “Come on, I remember where it is.”

 

~*~

 

The house was nondescript, a simple two story building that wouldn’t have looked out of place in any middle-class suburb. It was isolated, surrounded by a patch of woods and quite far out of town, but there were plenty of houses like that, even. The scent was the most obvious indicator that it was something different.

 

The area stunk of Sebastian. Kurt had said that he smelled like Craigslist, but what it smelled like now was a threat. The scent was old though, and how creepy was it that he was suddenly able to discern between old and new smells?

 

“He’s definitely gone,” Blaine said, turning back to look at Kurt. Kurt was getting used to the low-light vision, that was way less creepy than the smelling thing, but it was still startling to be able to read the expression on Blaine’s face in the early summer darkness, even with only one eye.

 

Kurt followed Blaine around the back, where the door had been left ajar, and into the house. “I don’t think he’s even been back since I escaped,” Blaine said, his eyebrows drawing together in concern. “He said something about the government coming after us, maybe he was actually scared instead of just being an ass.”

 

“I never thought that I’d be a real threat to society,” Kurt said glumly. “I’m going to miss being able to tell myself that I’m not actually a monster when Republicans say I am.” He scratched at the dried blood on his cheek and tried to open his eye again.

 

Blaine shifted uncomfortably. “Let’s go get cleaned up, and then we can talk about what’s next.”

 

Kurt shrugged and walked down the hallway, opening doors at random until he’d found a bathroom with a small shower, but, curiously, no mirror over the sink. “The linen closet is probably upstairs, I’ll go look, and there’s probably another bathroom.” He flipped on the tap in the sink, letting out a small sigh of relief when water came out, and bent over, splashing water up into his face and rubbing at his eye.

 

The lid finally loosened, and he straightened up, blinking in relief. “Oh my god,  _finally_ ,” he sighed. Blaine was gone, but he could hear him moving around overhead. “Blaine?” he called.

 

“I found towels!” Blaine said, coming to the head of the stairs with two folded towels held carefully away from his bloody clothes. “And the shower up here is nicer, so you can use that one and I’ll use this one.” He smiled at Kurt, a little hesitantly, and Kurt didn’t really feel like smiling, but he forced what he hoped was a reassuring one onto his face regardless. Blaine was trying, and the least he could do was try as well.

 

“Thank you, sweetie.” Kurt pressed his damp lips to Blaine’s cheek and relieved him of one of the towels. “I’ll see you in a bit.” He climbed the stairs and stopped dead.

 

The upstairs was normal, except for a person-sized hole in the wall beside a reinforced door. Kurt set the towel down and slipped through it curiously, ending up in a tiny room that held a bed and not much else.

 

There were no windows, and Kurt slowly turned to see the entire room-no, not a room, prison. The door had deep scratches in it, evenly spaced and narrow, with a few tiny bloodstains along the path, like someone had clawed at it until their fingernails bled.

 

That someone was Blaine. Kurt knew that it had to have been, that he had been so desperate to escape that he’d torn a hole in the wall, and he bit his lip to keep it from quivering. The floor was littered with debris from the drywall, and Kurt spied a newspaper under a large chunk of it. He bent to shift it aside, revealing a scattered stack of papers.

 

“Oh,” he said, staring down at the picture of Blaine, and then Blaine and him, and then finally just him, standing in the morgue with nothing but a sheet on. He tried to muster up some indignation that everyone he knew had presumably seen him that close to naked, but it wasn’t coming. Dad knew he wasn’t all the way dead.

 

They had all been downstairs when Blaine had shown up at his window, and that meant that they’d all seen his body, and now there were pictures of him not dead, and Blaine had torn his throat out, and his dad had seen that, Carole had seen it, Finn and Sam had seen it. His heart ached fiercely, and he clapped a hand over his mouth to smother a sob.

 

He had to call home. He couldn’t see his dad, he didn’t trust himself, but the phone would be okay, he couldn’t hurt anyone over the phone, and they must be so confused, and maybe his dad would know what to do.

 

He dropped the papers and squeezed back through the hole, but stopped short just before he grabbed the phone off the wall at the sight of his own bloody hand. Five minutes in the shower first, and then phone. Five more minutes wouldn’t hurt, and once he started talking to his dad, he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop, and if they had to run suddenly, he would regret not taking his chance to be clean.

 

He grabbed the towel off the floor and walked down the hall to the master suite, where the door to the bathroom was wide open. He peeled off the t-shirt and too-big pants with relief, almost grateful that there was no mirror in the second bathroom either so he couldn’t see what a mess he was, and stepped into the shower.

 

Sebastian had okay taste in shower products, but Kurt’s skin was still crawling at the idea of using body wash that belonged to the asshole who’d orchestrated his death. He drew the line at the loofa, opting to use his hands to scrub at the blood instead.

 

Kurt didn’t think he’d ever showered so quickly in his life, but when the water stopped running pink down the drain, he rinsed off and got out, toweling off roughly and wrapping it around his waist. He left the clothes where they’d fallen. There was no way they were salvageable, and they hadn’t been acceptable in the first place.

 

He pulled open Sebastian’s closet and grabbed the first inoffensive shirt and pants combo he saw, pulling them quickly as he went back out into the hallway. The shower was still running downstairs when he took the phone off the dock, sitting down and leaning against the wall to dial. It rang twice before the call was picked up, and Finn said “Hello?” cautiously.

 

“Finn, it’s me,” Kurt said. “I know it’s crazy, please don’t hang up.”

 

“Oh, hey dude!” Finn said. “No, this guy from the FBI totally explained everything, we totally know you’re a vampire and stuff.”

 

“What?”

 

“No, yeah, it’s totally cool. They have this pill that you can take to keep you from killing people, so you can come home. Where are you?” Finn sounded calm, way too calm and matter-of-fact, and it was making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He shouldn’t be talking about the vampire thing so easily.

 

“Um, hiding,” Kurt hedged. “Can I talk to my dad?”

 

“Hang on.” Finn disappeared for a couple seconds, during which there was furious muttering in the background. “No.”

 

“Finn, you let me talk to my dad this instant,” Kurt demanded.

 

“I can’t!” Finn said, sounding frustrated. “The FBI guy says no. Burt’s worried about you, Kurt, but they think you might have some sort of vampire reaction to his voice. You need to come home, you can take the pill, and everything will be okay. Is Blaine with you?”

 

“Yes, but-”

 

“Bring him too and then-”

 

“Let me talk to the FBI guy,” Kurt interrupted. “Why is he talking through you?”

 

“We thought you’d prefer to hear it from someone you know, rather than have a stranger pick up the phone at your own house,” a smooth voice cut in. “We expected that you’d be checking in sooner rather than later. We just want to help you, Kurt. None of this is your fault.”

 

“I know it’s not. I didn’t call Sebastian up and say ‘Hey, you know what would really make my Tuesday? If you messily murdered my boyfriend, left his corpse for me to find, and then tricked him into killing me. That would be swell.’ I’m not looking for platitudes, I want to know what you’re going to do to me if I do what you say.”

 

The man was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he said finally. “There’s a pill that’s been developed. You take it every day, and while it doesn’t prevent you from needing blood, it does curb your violent tendencies and lower your sensitivity to sunlight. It means that you can live an almost normal life, without being scared that you’ll hurt the ones you love. We know that you were here yesterday, Kurt, and that if Blaine hadn’t stopped you your family would probably be dead. All you have to do is come in, and we can help you.”

 

“Is that it?” Kurt asked. “No experiments, nothing like that?”

 

“Nothing of the sort.” The man was calm, and reassuringly quick to confirm that nothing would happen to them if they went, but Kurt still felt uneasy.

 

“Okay. Can I talk to my dad now?”

 

“Just come home, Kurt. It’s not safe for you to talk to him until you’ve taken the pill. You’re just going to have to trust your brother.” The call ended with a click, and Kurt contemplated throwing the phone against the wall.

 

He stood up with forced grace and replaced the phone on the dock. Sebastian had said something about being poked and prodded in a lab, Kurt knew he had, and now he was gone. Kurt was inclined to trust Finn over Sebastian, but if his dad wasn't allowed to talk to him, why was he?

It sounded as though Blaine was getting out of the shower, and Kurt walked back down the hall to Sebastian’s room. He didn’t particularly want to, but he needed clothes, and Sebastian’s were as good as he was getting.

 

~*~

 

Getting the blood out of his hair was the worst, and Blaine mumbled “hate you, Sebastian,” as he shampooed again. “I hope you fall down a well.”

 

When he ran his fingers through his hair again, they didn’t catch on any clumps, and Blaine shut off the water with a sigh, stepping out of the stall.

 

"Foresight enough for towels, but not for clothes, Blaine, really?" he said grumpily when he realized there was no way that he could wear the same bloody clothes. He pulled the boxers back on and hung his towel over the stall door. He’d have to find something else to wear.

 

The hallway smelled slightly different than it had, but Blaine shrugged it off. It was probably just the perfume from the shampoo.

 

He walked towards the kitchen instead of up the stairs, giving Kurt a little space. And giving himself a little space, there was no point in lying to himself. He still remembered the taste of Kurt's blood and how he'd stared up at him as he died, and the guilt was wearing at him.

 

He slumped down onto the closest chair when he hit the kitchen, listening to Kurt shuffle around upstairs through the creaking of the floor boards.

 

Except-

 

Except that one wasn't upstairs, it was behind him.

 

Blaine jumped out of his chair and spun around to see the shiny barrel of a shotgun, too far away for him to get to, and Coach Beiste holding it, her face solemn. "Sit down, punkin," she said. "I ain't here to hurt you."

 

"You're pointing a gun at me." Blaine felt like maybe it was a silly thing to say, but it didn't really fit with "ain't here to hurt you".

 

"A precaution only, kid, I've seen what vampires can do to a human, and timeline of your death and Kurt's indicates that it was probably you that did it to him." Blaine flinched, and she frowned. "Sorry. Was it? Did the one that got you do it?"

 

"No. It was me," Blaine said, sitting down. "I did it."

 

"Well, that's better than the alternative. Who did to you?"

 

"A guy named Sebastian Smythe, he goes to our old school.” Blaine paused to shake his head in disbelief. “Why is me doing it better than the alternative?"

 

"Well, the alternative is this Sebastian turning two kids within a week. That sort of trend makes the Department nervous, and it could’ve gotten much uglier than this, punkin, trust me. This might still go bad, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Was it an accident? You turning him, I mean." She kept the gun up, and Blaine noticed that it had gone silent upstairs as he nodded his head vigorously.

 

"Yeah, yes, I didn't mean to,” Blaine stammered. “I still don't know what I did or how I did it, I promise."

 

She studied him a moment longer and nodded finally, her stern expression softening a bit. She kept the gun at the ready, though, and it was really starting to make Blaine nervous. "Okay. Where's Kurt now?"

 

"Upstairs, but-"

 

"Here,” Kurt said, barely visible behind Coach Beiste. Blaine had barely a second to be shocked at his appearance before Kurt launched himself at her, fangs bared in a vicious snarl.

 

“Christ on a crackerjack, Hummel!” Coach Beiste jerked to the side, and Kurt spun past her, putting himself between Blaine and the gun. That didn’t seem to matter to him when he kicked her hard in the gut, grabbing the barrel of the gun and turning it aside when she pulled the trigger.

 

The shot went wild, smashing against a cupboard door and filling the air with a horrible stench. Kurt snarled and ducked when Coach Beiste snapped a punch towards his head, and Blaine threw himself out of the chair towards them. He didn’t know why Kurt had attacked, it wasn’t like him to throw the first punch, but he had to stop him. He knew from experience that a human didn’t stand a chance against a vampire.

 

Blaine grabbed Kurt around the waist and tried to pull him back, just as he caught Coach Beiste’s arm in his mouth and bit down hard. She screamed, dropping her gun and Blaine stopped pulling, not wanting to tear at her arm. The sudden heavy scent of blood in the air was intoxicating, overpowering the horrible smell from the gun, but Blaine shook it off. This was a  _person_ , he couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

 

Beiste reaching into her pocket with her uninjured hand and bringing out a tiny spray-can solved his bloodlust issues for him. She fired without hesitation, and then Blaine’s world was filled with nothing but pain. It was the same smell as the gun, but fired directly into his face, and he felt like he was dying all over again.

 

Blaine was dimly aware of dropping to the linoleum, of losing his grip on Kurt, but the roaring in his head drowned out everything else. He groped blindly for Kurt, but couldn’t find him, and his face was burning in a way that was reminiscent of the rock-salt slushie, but instead of the agony being confined to his eye, it was spread all over his face.

 

Kurt landed on him hard and suddenly, and Blaine just  _knew_  it was him despite the distracting pain and blindness. Firm, sure hands grabbed his biceps and hauled him out from under Kurt and upright, and then his face was shoved under a blessedly cool stream of water and he was released.

 

He scrubbed at his face, letting the water rinse away whatever the spray had been until the burning stopped. He stood up, blinking hard, and Coach Beiste stepped into his blurry line of vision, holding a bloody towel to her arm.

 

“Help Kurt wash his face off, Blaine,” she instructed. “That stuff hurts like the dickens, but I don’t think I trust him around my blood at the moment.”

 

“What  _was_  that?” he choked out, stumbling back to where Kurt was still lying on the floor, clutching his face.

 

“The garlic spray or him trying to take my arm off?” Coach Beiste asked, pulling the towel away for a moment to check the bleeding. “He didn’t like me pointing a gun at his sire, I bet. Instinctual response, he wouldn’t have been able to stop it. As for the garlic, well, I’ve been around since before you were knee-high to a pigskin, kid. Ain’t nothing that’ll turn an angry vamp into a whiny pup faster. I usually use the gun because it’s got better range, but when the tiger’s got you by the claw, well...”

 

Blaine picked Kurt up, directing his face under the tap and trying to parse the explanation. “That was  _garlic_? Are you joking?”

 

“Was the Music City Miracle a forward pass?” Coach Beiste raised one eyebrow.

 

“Um, no?”

 

“Then I suggest you avoid garlic from now on, kid. It’s common knowledge that vampires can’t stand it.”

 

Kurt sputtered on the tap water, scrubbing at his eyes. “Okay,” Blaine said distractedly, scooping water over his face in an attempt to help. “So no more Caesar salad for me, I guess?”

 

“It’s your choice, punkin, but don’t come crying to me if it stings.”

 

“That really, really, hurt,” Kurt said, pulling his face out from under the water. “And I’m really, really sorry, I couldn’t help it.”

 

“Don’t worry too much about it,” Coach Beiste said airily. “I’ve been bit by worse than a vampire that barely has baby fangs.”

 

Kurt kept his mouth closed, but Blaine could see him running his tongue over his teeth self-consciously. “How’d you find us, anyway?” Blaine asked. “And why were you looking?”

 

“Ah, sorry, kid. I put a tracer in Kurt’s neck when he was in the morgue, just in case he decided to get back up, and those things charge slower than a battery made of molasses, so it wasn’t transmitting until tonight.” Kurt clapped a hand to his neck, looking faintly horrified. “As for why I was looking, well...” She dug her hand into her pocket.

 

Blaine winced, waiting for the spray to make a comeback. Coach Beiste produced a badge instead, flipping it open and presenting it. “Shannon Beiste, FBI, Department of Former Humans. Formerly. I retired to get back to my first love of football, and got myself called in to work out this mess because the Department’s as busy as a fox in hen coop and about as thin on the ground as Principal Figgins is on top. They didn’t have anyone to spare.”

 

“The FBI is at my house though,” Kurt said, still prodding at his neck like he could find the tracer. “I talked to one of their agents when I called just now.”

 

Coach Beiste stiffened. “No, they ain’t. Did you get a name of the person you talked to? What phone did you call from?”

 

“He didn’t tell me his name, he just said that they had a pill that we could take to keep us from hurting people, and that we should go to my house. I called from the phone upstairs, is there a prob-”

 

“Blaine, find some clothes, Kurt get shoes, we have to go,” Coach Beiste barked. “That was not the FBI, but I can guarantee that we’re about to have company.” Blaine stared at her for a moment in shock, and she shouted, “GO! This ain’t a joke!”

 

Blaine grabbed Kurt’s hand, dragging him upstairs. They passed by the hole in the wall, and into Sebastian’s room. Blaine wrinkled his nose as he pulled on a pair of jeans, rolling up the cuffs to get his feet out, and pulled on a polo shirt.

 

Kurt tossed a pair of shoes at him. “What do you think she meant, he’s not with the FBI? Finn said he was, and he said that he could help us, I don’t understand.”

 

Blaine shrugged helplessly, tugging them on. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Kurt.”

 

“Don’t be,” Kurt said gently, standing over him. “It’s not your fault, Blaine, not any of it. It’s going to be okay.” He leaned down and pressed their lips together briefly. “I promise.”

 

“They’re here,” Coach Beiste said from the doorway. “I’m not authorized to shoot people, kids, there’s nothing I can do to stop them. I’ve already sent a distress call to the Department, but they won’t be here until it’s too late.”

 

“ _Who’s_  here?” Kurt demanded. “What’s happening?”

 

There was a slam that shook the house, and the sound of splintering wood from below, followed by thundering footsteps as people streamed in. “It’s a shadow organization that’s been known to snatch former humans, and we don’t tend to get them back after. You boys go out the window and run. Get out of the country, get as far as you can, and don’t contact anyone. The Department has Kurt’s tracer frequency, and they’re the only ones who do now. They’ll come for you, but you have to hide.”

 

“What about you, though?” Blaine asked. “What’ll they do to you?”

 

“Not much, hopefully. Now you get your tiny patooties out that window, and you run faster than a rabbit being chased by a redneck that’s in the mood for stew.”

 

Kurt pulled the window open, letting in the late night breeze, and glanced out at the drop. “I’ve been doing a lot of falling lately,” he noted dryly.

 

A man downstairs barked “Clear, check the upstairs,” and Kurt jumped out the window without any further hesitation. Blaine looked back, and Coach Beiste smiled ruefully at him.

 

“I should’ve known that coming out of retirement for one last kick at the goat wouldn’t end well, punkin. No regrets. You get going.”

 

She made a shooing motion, and Blaine jumped out to land beside Kurt on the lawn. “Is she going to be okay?”

 

“I don’t know,” Blaine said, grabbing Kurt’s hand. “We need to run.”

 

There was a loud crack, and something whistled past Blaine’s face. “Gun, gun,  _gun_ ,” Kurt said, jerking Blaine towards the woods. “Come  _on_ , Blaine.”

 

Blaine followed, glancing over his shoulder to see a man with a gun coming around the side of the house. “Coming!” he yelped.

 

He followed Kurt into the trees, running as hard as he could while dodging branches. When the woods ended and they found themselves again in a farmer’s field, Blaine relaxed his iron grip on Kurt’s hand. “What now?” he asked, clutching at a stitch in his side.

 

“I guess...” Kurt said huskily, like he was on the verge of tears as well as breathless from the sprint, “I guess we run.”

 

~*~  
  
End Part Three

 


	4. Chapter 4

~*~

 

“Dear God, even though you don’t exist, and clearly hate both of us if you do, thank you for this.”  
                           

“Kurt.”

 

Kurt looked back at Blaine, all fake innocence and charm. “I’m just really grateful for this gift from God, Blaine. This very, very ironic gift.”

 

The sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, and Blaine was starting to feel an overpowering urge to hide and sleep. They’d run all night, trying to get distance from Lima, and from the people chasing them.

 

Now they were standing in front of a small, ramshackle church, seemingly unoccupied and the first building they’d come upon in miles.

 

“Shall we?” Kurt asked, his joking facade disappearing as he let his shoulders sag slightly. “I think... I think I can feel the sun coming up, and it’s making me tired.”

 

“Do you think it’ll be okay?” Blaine asked, feeling a little apprehensive despite himself. “I mean, it’s a church, and we’re sort of...well...”

 

Kurt straightened abruptly, staring at Blaine with a disbelieving expression. “And this is the second reason why you should never watch that show again, whether those two guys were really hot or not, because not that I minded staying up past two am until you stopped jumping at shadows, or being woken up at midnight because you’d been ridiculous and watched a scary show that late, but  _it wasn’t real_ , Blaine. There’s no such thing as a haunted truck, and a church wouldn’t save you if there was. It’s just a building.”

 

“I  _know_  it’s not real,” Blaine protested weakly. “I only ever watched one episode.”

 

“And what an episode it was. Can we go inside now?”

 

“You do remember the part where we’re vampires, right?” Blaine said as Kurt began to drag him by the hand toward the door of the church. “The whole “science can explain everything” idea kind of flies out the window with this.”

 

Kurt paused, stopping fast enough that Blaine stumbled into him. “Sorry,” he said, steadying him. “And, well, I’m pretty sure that vampires existing doesn’t mean that God does, but obviously I was wrong about vampires, I could be wrong about God. If I get any proof he exists and doesn’t want me in churches, I won’t go in one again.”

 

He let go of Blaine’s hand, jogging to the door and pulling the latch easily. The door swung open, and Blaine shivered in apprehension as Kurt looked back at him, pulling a scared face, and walked backward through the door.

 

“I think it’s okay,” he said. “Will you come in now?”

 

Blaine stole one last glance at the sky to the east, beginning to take on a red cast, and his skin began to tingle with warning. “Coming.”

 

The door slid shut easily, the latch dropping back into place, and Blaine looked around at the small anteroom, pews and an altar visible through a partially ajar set of wooden doors. A coat rack stood off to one side, the carpet beneath it littered with wire hangers. A bulletin board loudly advertised for the monthly Republican meeting, complete with slogan “God’s is a Republican!”

 

Blaine snorted at the typo, pointing the sign out for Kurt when he turned to see why he was making noise. “We should see if there’s a basement maybe,” he suggested.

 

“I think it’s only the two rooms,” Kurt said, peering into the church proper. “That part has windows, I think we should just stay here in the shadows.” He picked a corner and sat down heavily, stroking his hair into a semblance of neatness.

 

Blaine hesitated a moment, long enough for Kurt to raise an eyebrow at him. “Blaine?”

 

“When you called home...”

 

Kurt sighed and patted the floor beside him. Blaine obligingly sat down, and Kurt tipped his head against the wall. “I called, and Finn picked up. He didn’t seem upset or surprised, and he knew about the whole vampire thing, which is not that surprising, I guess. I saw the newspapers that were in that room at Sebastian’s house. And the hole you made in the wall to come and get me.” He slid down a little until he was shoulder to shoulder with Blaine.

 

Blaine craned his neck to see Kurt’s face, but his expression was unreadable. “I couldn’t get out the door, and Sebastian was going to kill you.”

 

“I wonder how he was planning to do that?” Kurt mused. “I mean, not that I particularly want to find out  _how_  he was going to murder me, but Coach Beiste had garlic and no bullets, and those people were using guns with bullets like they thought they’d work.”

 

“Maybe they were trying to slow us down?” Blaine suggested. “Like, to catch us?”

 

“Maybe,” Kurt said noncommittally. “So, um, yes, I talked to Finn, and then he said I couldn’t talk to my dad, and he put that man on, who said that he had a pill that would let us live an almost normal life, and I guess he must have traced the call.” He stopped talking, frowning a little. “Blaine?”

 

“What is it?”

 

Kurt shuffled until they weren’t touching, turning to face him. “When Sebastian said he was going to kill me, you bashed your way through a wall, and then you tracked me down by smell. You couldn’t have done that when you were human, could you have?”

 

“No? I don’t quite follow-”

 

Kurt interrupted, “But you also killed me. You didn’t even know what was happening until it was too late to save me.” He washed his hands nervously, trembling with  _something_.

 

“Kurt, I’m sorry, I-”

 

“I would’ve killed her. When she pointed that gun at you-” Kurt was still now. “If you hadn’t- I would’ve killed my dad. We tore that cow apart, and I can’t stop thinking about what if you hadn’t stopped me when I was at my house.”

 

Kurt’s eyes glittered with tears in the darkness, and Blaine’s skin crawled. “Why are we running?” he demanded. “I couldn’t stop myself, you couldn’t stop yourself. We’re  _monsters_.”

 

Blaine caught Kurt’s hand, holding on tightly, and the denial came easily, despite everything, because it was  _Kurt_. “No. You didn’t want to, you’re not a monster.”

 

“But I did. I didn’t want to, but I felt like I  _needed_  to. Your face, when you pinned me...” Kurt looked away. “God, Blaine, you were the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

 

He let Kurt’s hand drop, his fingertips buzzing with a sudden numbness. Sense memories of lapping at Kurt’s blood as he lay limply on his bed, of readjusting to get a better angle to pull at his skin bombarded him, and he was grateful that he didn’t have to breathe that often, because he wasn’t sure that he could.

 

“I know,” he said, realization that anything else, that any sort of well-meaning reassurance he could offer was a lie wrapping around his heart like a lead weight.

 

The first pale rays of sunlight, red with the dawn, hit the wall opposite them, and the quiet way that sleep had been calling him became overpowering, covering his guilt and his horror in a thick grey blanket.

 

“We can’t be awake during the day,” Kurt whispered. “Blaine.”

 

Blaine looked back at him, and Kurt sighed. “I feel like an emotional yoyo. It’ll be better when we wake up.”

 

“How?” Blaine said thickly. “How can it be better?”

 

Kurt looked at him for a moment but didn’t answer, breathing lightly and leaning back into Blaine. Blaine took the silent message and closed his eyes, relaxing into sleep as the day came.

 

~*~

 

Alarm bells were going off in his head.

 

It made it difficult to sleep.

 

Kurt opened his eyes to see the latch on the door wiggle, clearly visible in the dim light. The sun was gone from the east facing windows, which meant that it would presumably come in through the door when it opened.

 

Blaine was awake and unmoving beside him, and Kurt pushed him upright and into the corner just as the door swung open, bathing the room in evening light. An old man stepped in, leaning heavily on a cane, and Kurt pressed himself against the wall, thinking “ _don’t look at us, please don’t see us_.”

 

“I know you’re in here,” the man said reedily, calling into the church. “You kids always think you can hide, but there’s no hiding from God. Don’t you dare think you can get away with using my church for your fornications.”

 

He walked through the double doors, the tapping of his cane and the thudding of his heart getting further away. “Fornications?” Blaine mouthed incredulously.

 

“What do we do?” Kurt whispered. “He’s going to come back, he’ll see us for sure.” The room was lit now, the only corner safe from the sun the one that they were huddled in.

 

“He can’t have seen us come in, that was in the morning and it was dark.” Kurt gestured for Blaine to get the point, just as the old man made a sound of triumph from inside the church that had them both pressed back into the wall.

 

“I knew where you were going as soon as I saw you walk past my house,” he said smugly. “Now, get out of here, and don’t think I won’t be calling your parents.”

 

There was no way he could see them from where he was standing, unless he could see through walls, but Kurt’s confusion about who he was talking to disappeared when a girl begged “Please, Pastor, it won’t happen again, please don’t call them.”

 

“You’re dreaming if you think that any force on this planet could stop me from informing your parents that I caught you necking in the pews,” he said sharply. “I suggest you tell them yourselves, save them the surprise.”

 

A boy’s voice joined with the girl’s in begging for mercy, and Kurt was torn from wondering how they got in past them by Blaine tugging on his hand. “If we run, we can hide in the shadow of the building around back.”

 

Kurt flinched at the memory of the sun touching his skin, but nodded acquiescence. They had to hide somewhere. He pulled up his shirt to cover his lower face and stole a glance out into the main church, where the pastor was still lecturing two scared looking teenagers. “Okay, he’s distracted, let’s go,” he whispered.

 

The first hit of sunlight was staggering. Kurt’s eyes burned and watered, and his exposed skin began to sting, the fiery heat of the sun like a physical force driving him back. Blaine faltered, and Kurt pulled his hand, dragging him around the side of the church as quickly as he could. He felt slow, and heavy, and it  _hurt_.

 

The shade was a palpable relief, like plunging into a pool of water to put out a fire, but the burns were still there. He let go of Blaine’s hand with a hiss of pain, watching as his blistered red skin healed back to smooth and pale.

 

“I thought pastors were supposed to be  _nice_ ,” Kurt said. “That man was awful.”

 

“Well, they  _were_  having sex in the church,” Blaine pointed out, blushing a little under his rapidly healing burns. “Or something.”

 

“If I was going to murder people for food, I’d totally start with that guy,” Kurt said sulkily, picking at his fingernail.

 

When he looked up, Blaine was staring at him sympathetically. “Is this about the time that Mr. Schue found us in the janitor’s closet and called your dad?”

 

“No!” Kurt denied, maybe a little too loudly. He hushed, waiting for an indication that he’d been overheard before continuing. “I’d just be doing God a favour. No one wants to be represented by a jerk.”

 

“Well, that sign said that God’s a Republican, what if it’s right? Maybe he does want to be represented by jerks,” Blaine suggested brightly. Kurt giggled a little, and then hushed up as voices rose in the church again.

 

“Those kids weren’t there when we went in, were they?” he asked. “How did they get past us? I woke up as soon as that door handle started moving.

 

Blaine bit his lip in confusion and looked up. “Oh, window.” Kurt followed his finger to a window, and felt immediately foolish.

 

They sat in silence for a few minutes longer, until Kurt couldn’t take it any longer. “I’m sorry about this morning.”

 

Blaine frowned. “Don’t be sorry, we do need to talk about it,” he said. “What are we doing? We have no plan, no help, and, yeah, even if we don’t really want to be, we sort of  _are_ monsters. I could hear that man’s heartbeat, and it made me kind of hungry.”

 

“Coach Beiste told us to leave the country, right? And she knew what we are, and didn’t want us to go to those fake-FBI people, so we can do what she said. Leave. And the food thing is awful, but I think we have to keep using cows and stuff, except a little more subtle than... than Bessie. Because we’re risking people if we don’t keep ourselves fed.” Kurt breathed in, beginning to feel more hopeful. “And she said that there was people who would help us, and I think she meant help us not be monsters. We just have to make it until then.”

 

Blaine looked at him oddly. “Kurt, are we still boyfriends, even though we died and came back as vampires and I was actually the one to kill you?”

 

Kurt felt a horrible tightening in his chest, and fear made him babble, “What? Of course we are, or do you not want to be with me anymore? Oh God, did I make too many religion jokes?”

 

Blaine shook his head. “No, no, I just wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t mind if I did this.” He threw himself at Kurt, smashing their mouths together and pressing himself close.

 

He broke off the kiss before Kurt had worked through enough of his surprise to respond, whispered, “I love you, I love you so much, you’re amazing,” and then he kissed Kurt again, and Kurt’s head spun with the sudden change between trying to verbally build their morale to physically, very, very physically, building up something else.

 

Blaine stroked his hand up Kurt’s back, pressing their chests together. Kurt had to put a hand down quickly to keep them from toppling over, but he grabbed Blaine’s face with his free hand so he could take control of the kiss. Blaine opened his mouth slightly, and Kurt smiled against his lips at the obvious hint to take it further.

 

They hadn’t kissed since before Blaine had died, Kurt realized. Running for their lives and angsting about being turned into bloodthirsty creatures didn’t leave much time for makeouts, and their schedule had been long ruined.

 

_Less being sad, more taking advantage of unsupervised opportunities for encounters_ , Kurt decided firmly, sliding his mouth off of Blaine’s and kissing up toward his ear. He felt warm and a little off-balance, aroused in a strange way.

 

The taste of blood touched his lips suddenly, and he jerked back as he realized that his fangs had popped out and sliced Blaine’s cheek. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” he squeaked, touching the small cut.

 

Blaine covered Kurt’s hand with his own, looking slightly chagrined. “Huh.” His mouth shifted oddly as his own fangs sunk back into his gums. “I guess we should’ve thought about what could happen before I jumped on you.”

 

“Not that I’m complaining, but what brought that on, anyway?” Kurt asked curiously. “I thought we were having a serious talk.”

 

“We were!” Blaine said quickly. “But then you were so hopeful and it made me feel better and then I just really really wanted to be kissing you. It was okay, though?”

 

“It was okay. It was better than okay.” Kurt looked back up at the window, where the pastor was  _still_  scolding the kids. “We are kind of hiding, though.”

 

“Point. Probably we should put that on hold then.” Kurt made the mistake of looking at Blaine’s mouth as he spoke, and had the strange experience of wishing it was on him, despite the unpleasant results of the last time. At least he wasn’t likely to get his throat ripped out again, and Blaine really did have a lovely mouth. Skilled.

 

Blaine was looking at him knowingly, and Kurt pulled his gaze away with no small effort, looking up at the evening sky still dangerously lit. His cheeks were burning slightly, and he knew that Blaine knew exactly what he was thinking, because Blaine _knew_  how good he was.

 

He coughed lightly to break the silence, a little embarrassed, and Blaine laughed quietly as he settled his arms around Kurt’s waist, pulling him into Blaine’s chest as it jogged with silent laughter. “You’re making fun of me,” Kurt accused.

 

“What could I possibly make fun of you for?” Blaine asked, all innocence. “It’s not like I wasn’t thinking the same thing,” he said quietly, his mouth brushing against Kurt’s ear.

 

A shiver ran up his spine, pressing him back into Blaine. “Oh?” he said, instantly mollified. And interested. “You should tell me more about what you were thinking, and then I’ll tell you if it was the same thing.”

 

“Well-  _they’re coming out_ ,” Blaine hissed with sudden urgency, throwing himself to the ground and taking Kurt with him. It took him a moment to catch up, and all his willpower to not sit back up and frown at Blaine.

 

“The sun’s almost down,” he pointed out. “Also, we have no idea where we are. We should go and ask them.”

 

“Really, Kurt? We should go and ask the random angry pastor where we are? Like ‘Excuse me sir, can you tell us what state we’re in? We’re fleeing from the government, and also we’re vampires.’ I don’t think that’ll work.”

 

“We’re not running from the  _government_ , Blaine, and I’m obviously going to leave out the parts that make us sound like we should be locked up.” Kurt rolled out from Blaine’s grasp and stood up. “Are you coming, or do you want to wait here?”

 

“Actually,” Blaine said, staying on the ground. “I’m going to wait here in case something goes wrong and I have to rescue you.”

 

“They’re people, Blaine, and I’m a terrifying creature of the night. What could possibly go wrong?”

 

~*~

 

“In retrospect,” Kurt said as they ran from the rapidly growing pack of werewolves, “I don’t think I’ll ever be saying that again.”

 

“Saying what again?” Blaine asked in confusion, glancing behind them and feeling a twinge of discomfort at how close they were getting.

 

“What could possibly go wrong.”

 

“Well, you’ve said it again now,” Blaine pointed out. He knew it was childish, but at that particular moment he couldn’t bring himself to care. “You’re not doing a very good job of never saying it again.”

 

“I didn’t mean it, so it doesn’t count,” Kurt said snippily. “And maybe we could focus on running instead of talking?”

 

“You started the conversation!” Blaine exclaimed. “All I did was respond, how is this my fault?”

 

Kurt scowled at him and sped up, hurdling a fence effortlessly. “I can’t believe that of all the awful little towns in the country, we stopped at the one full of werewolves.”

 

“I can,” Blaine said, changing his trajectory to avoid a large tree stump in the middle of a field. “Given our luck in the last week, I’m surprised we’re still alive.”

 

“There, that road,” Kurt said quickly. “We can turn up it, and hopefully we’ll find people. We look like humans, they don’t, so if they want to keep their secret, they’ll have to stop.”

 

Blaine was beginning to feel the first traces of fatigue already when they jumped the last fence and skidded into a turn up the gravel road, feet pounding hard. The werewolves, hairier and bigger than Blaine thought wolves would be, began to jump the fence, coming after them.

 

“How long are they going to chase us?!” he said in exasperation. “This is getting absurd.”

 

“I wasn’t exactly watching Twilight to learn about werewolves, Blaine. Though,” Kurt turned his head to yell at the werewolves, “you’re  _really_  making me regret being Team Jacob!”

 

A werewolf, Blaine thought it was maybe the one that had been the teenage girl, growled loudly in response. Kurt looked like he wanted to say more, but thought better of it, following Blaine’s lead and speeding up again until fenceposts whipped past them and the wind roared in their ears.

 

When Blaine chanced a look back again, the pack was gone, faded into the night as if it had never been there. “Kurt, I think it’s okay,” he said, slowing down and breathing in deeply. He felt oddly lightheaded, and his heart was pounding almost painfully.

 

Kurt stopped beside him, holding a hand over his heart. “I am never running again.” He bent over. “It shouldn’t be possible to hurt after you’re dead.”

 

“Being a vampire sucks.” Blaine screwed his eyes shut.

 

“I’m not even going to point out the obvious joke.” Kurt straightened and frowned. “I think I’m hungry again. And, um, we might be even more lost than we were.”

 

Blaine opened his eyes and scanned the darkness, and then remembered to scent the air. “I can smell...a farm, maybe, over that way, but nothing too close. We should go and see, at least.”

 

“I did not realize America had this much farmland. How did I not realize that? We live in Ohio, for god’s sake.”

 

“Well, we headed south out of Lima, and since the sun sets in the west, we were running south through the fields, right? And then,” Blaine had to use his hands to figure it out, “east, I think, when we turned on the road, and we were going pretty fast. There’s lots of farmland south of Lima, and we might have even left Ohio by now. Maybe we’re in Kentucky?”

 

“We’re doing a really good job of leaving the country,” Kurt said dryly. He started walking towards the farm Blaine had pointed out. “We don’t have many choices on that, do we?”

 

“Mexico or Canada,” Blaine said shrugging. “Canada’s closer. Also, no fence. Maybe. Is there a fence?”

 

“I went to high school at McKinley, Blaine. If you don’t know, how should I know? Canada means we need to go north, then.” Kurt stopped like he was going to change direction, and then kept walking. “Before we start going north, we should find out where we _are_.”

 

“Also we should find something to eat.” Blaine’s slight faintness after they’d stopped running had faded quickly into a vague desire to rip and tear, which was both discomfiting and illuminating. “I think that the more we do, the more blood we need.”

 

“Blaine, that’s basic nutrition and also common sense. Though, yes, vampires. There isn’t much sensible about this, is there. God I wish I had a god to curse.”

 

Kurt scuffed his foot in the dirt, dragging a long furrow in the field they were walking in. Blaine tried to read his facial expression from the back of his head, gave it up as a lost cause, and asked, “Are you feeling okay?”

 

“I’m feeling grumpy. Hungry. Like we just got chased for werewolves for an hour. And like we have to go to Canada. Do you know what I know about Canada? It’s cold, and it’s north of America.”

 

“It’s May, are you sure it’s cold there?”

 

“No, I’m  _not_  sure, since it’s Canada, and no one cares.” Kurt finished with an air of finality, and Blaine had to stop talking to regroup.

 

“What about gay marriage? Canada has gay marriage, that’s pretty good.” He smiled, confident that if anything could get Kurt excited about Canada, the prospect of marriage would be it. “We could get married.”

 

He stopped talking when he realized what he’d said. Kurt, on the other hand, stopped walking, and turned around with a terrifying look in his eyes. “Blaine Anderson, tell me that you didn’t just propose marriage in a wheat field in the middle of nowhere, directly after we’ve been running for our lives and while I look like I dressed myself in the dark and then rolled around in a garden. Please.”

 

“You look great!” Blaine protested. Kurt cocked a disbelieving eyebrow, and he amended, “You look great for the circumstances, and you’re always wonderful no matter how you’re dressed.”

 

Kurt smiled, his mood apparently forgotten, and he leaned forward to give Blaine a quick peck on the lips. “How can you say things that should be ridiculous and sound so perfectly genuine? I love you so much right now it hurts.”

 

“The pain might be more needing to feed than love, Kurt,” Blaine tried to point out, and then Kurt pounced on him, his smile widening into a grin that showed his teeth as Blaine let himself be tackled to the cool ground.

 

Kurt hovered over him, framed by the stars in the sky, laughing and beautiful, and the pang in Blaine’s heart had nothing to do with being hungry. “We could, though,” he said, before he could stop himself. “Get married. When we go to Canada.”

 

Kurt wasn’t laughing anymore, suddenly serious. “Do you mean it?” he whispered.

 

“I meant it at Christmas, when I gave you that ring, everything I said, and I mean it now. Cookies are a bit harder, but I still want everything else with you, as long as you want it too.” Blaine watched Kurt carefully, the play of emotions across his face, and reached up to touch his cheek. “This whole  _thing_ , it’s changed everything for us, and I’m sorry that it did, but one thing that it didn’t change is the way I feel about you, and I hope it didn’t change the way you feel about me.”

 

“It didn’t, how could it? You’re still  _you_. You were there for some of the worst times of my life, helping me to be brave, to be happy, just by being yourself. You are the most loving person I’ve ever known, and I love you.” Kurt was smiling again, and tearing up a little, and Blaine was starting to lose his ability to focus from his own eyes watering. “And I would  _love_ to be your husband.”

 

Blaine’s heart was racing, faster than it had since he’d awoken into undeath, and searched for something to say, eventually coming out with, “Even if I’m a horrible undead monster?” He blinked rapidly until he could see Kurt smiling down at him.

 

“I am too, so yes. Even if you’re a horrible undead monster.” Kurt sat up, pulling Blaine with him, and leaned in for a gentle, lingering kiss. “Canada might not be so bad after all,” he said when they broke apart. “But we’re never going to get there if we stay here all night.” He stood up, extending a hand to Blaine. “Shall we?”

 

Blaine took it, and Kurt pulled him to his feet. “We shall,” he said pompously. “Canada awaits.”

 

Kurt snorted and started walking. “Keep talking like that, and I might change my mind.”

 

~*~

 

End Part Four


	5. Chapter 5

The farmhouse was quiet, all the lights turned off, and Kurt couldn’t help but wish he had a watch. Knowing what time it was would’ve been useful. He thought it was around midnight, maybe a little later, but he couldn’t be sure.

 

“There are people in the house,” Blaine whispered. Kurt restrained himself from a snarky response. He could hear their heartbeats, too, but he could also hear the livestock in a small paddock. The yard was full of grain silos, and it seemed like it was more of a crop farm than it was for cows or pigs, but even one would be okay.

 

“I think we should find out where we are first, and then try to, uh, should we call it feeding? That sounds weird. Either way, if it goes wrong, we might have to run.” Kurt crept across the gravel pad of the driveway toward the garage. There was no way that it would be safe for them to go into the house, but there might be something useful in there.

 

Blaine grabbed his hand as he walked past an SUV sat in the driveway. “Look at the licence plate.”

 

“Iowa.”

 

Well, that was unexpected.

 

“Maybe they’re friends, visiting from out of state. There is no way we made it to Iowa.”

 

Blaine shook his head. “Maybe, but uh, wow, okay, Iowa.”

 

“We’ll check the garage, there’ll be other vehicles in there, and then we’ll know where we really are.” Kurt pulled Blaine’s hand to get him moving again.

 

“I think it’s probably Iowa and we just run really fast now,” Blaine said, but Kurt wasn’t listening. Well, he _was_ listening, but he wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. Iowa was far. They couldn’t have run from Ohio to Iowa, not in less than two nights.

 

The garage door creaked slightly. They froze, waiting for some indication that they’d been heard from the house, but there was nothing. Blaine slipped in, and Kurt followed, looking around one last time for any trace of movement. Movement and also werewolves, because he didn’t fully trust that they’d given up on chasing them, whether they were long out of their territory or not.

 

“Iowa,” and Kurt could just _hear_ the slight smugness Blaine had at being right as he read off the licence plate of the pickup. “See?”

 

Kurt sagged against the side of truck. “We could outrun Olympic athletes. This is the most absurd thing that has ever happened ever.”

 

Blaine climbed up to perch on the tailgate. “We could be gold medallists in the marathon if they started holding it at night. And letting in dead people.”

 

“That could be a bit of an obstacle, yes.” Kurt saw something in the cab and leaned on the tailgate, bearing it down slightly, and metal flashed in the dim light as it jiggled. “They left the keys in the ignition.”

 

“Wait, really?”

 

“No, I just made that up.” Blaine flashed an exasperated frown at him, and Kurt smiled. “That could be useful.”

 

“Are we actually going to steal a truck?” Blaine’s eyes were shocked and wide.

 

“It might mean that we get to Canada tonight, unless you want to sprint for another couple of hours. It’s not like they wouldn’t get their truck back once we left it.”

 

“Stealing trucks isn’t very low profile, though. I think it might get us in trouble if they figure out we were headed for Canada.”

 

“Trucks get stolen all the time, Blaine, no one’s going to connect it to us, because we’re in _Iowa_.”

 

“Maybe, but I kind of doubt that trucks get stolen here, if they leave the keys in the ignition overnight,” Blaine said dubiously.

 

“Well, this’ll be a valuable lesson for them about theft.” Kurt smiled winningly. “Blaine, you don’t seriously want to walk to Canada.”

 

“No, but...” Blaine trailed off, and Kurt knew he had won. “I’ve never stolen anything before.”

 

“Well, neither have I!” Kurt said, a little indignant. “What, do you think I run around shoplifting?”

 

Blaine grinned down at him. “It’s just that you stole my heart so easily, I find it hard to believe that you’d never done it befo-”

 

“You are absolutely, totally fired from the position of boyfriend,” Kurt said, dancing away when Blaine reached for him. “Get down from there and let’s go find a cow so we can ruin its night and get out of here.”

 

~*~

 

The cow stared at them.

 

Blaine stared back, wondering when staring contests with cows had become his life. “What now?”

 

“I don’t know,” Kurt said. “He looks mad. Like he knows what we did to Bessie.”

 

“Don’t be absurd, he doesn’t know what happened to Bessie. Unless cows are psychic. Or speak English, because now he totally knows that we did something awful to a cow named Bessie.”

 

“I’m pretty sure that you’re not helping the situation by talking like that, then.” Kurt approached the cow slowly. “Here, cow. Don’t worry, I’m not going to murder you. I’m just going to suck your blood so we can run away to Canada.”

 

“Comforting,” Blaine said, completely deadpan. Kurt scowled at him, and the cow stepped back quickly, widening the distance between it and Kurt.

 

“Fine,” Kurt said. “We’ll do it this way.” He walked up to the cow purposefully and grabbed one of its horns, his eyes cringing shut as he bent to open a vein and bit. The cow mooed, but didn’t try to get away, and Blaine could smell the heavy iron scent of blood, carried by the breeze.

 

Kurt was being careful, and somehow kept control of himself despite the urges Blaine knew he had to be feeling. When he slowed, the cow began to show its agitation again, trying to edge away and snorting quietly. He beckoned Blaine in, taking his mouth away from the cow to say, “You have to think calming thoughts, or he gets excited.”

 

“Okay,” Blaine said, taking over Kurt’s hold on the cow’s horn. _Easy_ , he thought, and the stamping subsided.

 

“It’s easier when you’re biting. To keep him calm,” Kurt said, and his eyes were glistening, but Blaine could smell the blood and _needed_ it.

 

The blood flowing down his throat was a relief, the pressure to find prey easing on his mind, and it was easy to hold onto himself and remember what he was doing this time. As long as they didn’t wait too long between feedings, they could manage it, and that was almost more of a relief than the blood.

 

Kurt was delicately picking hair off his tongue when Blaine finished, making a face at it. “Unpleasant,” he observed neutrally. “I _really_ don’t like that very much.”

 

Blaine agreed wholeheartedly, but didn’t know how to fix it. “We didn’t kill him though, that’s something.” The cow tottered away unsteadily, the flow of blood from the wounds already slowing.

 

“Are we still going to steal that truck?” Kurt asked, wiping his hand on the grass. “We’ve only got so much night left.”

 

“I guess,” Blaine said, sighing heavily. “As long as we leave it somewhere so the owners can get it back.”

 

“Who’s driving? Me, right?” Kurt turned to retrace their steps back to the farmhouse.

 

“Fine by me. We’re worried about the people hearing us and trying to chase us, right? How are we going to deal with that?”

 

Kurt shrugged. “Um, drive really fast? I’m not exactly an experienced car thief, Blaine.”

 

They reached the garage, and Blaine pulled the main door open. It slid on well-oiled hinges quietly. “If we push it out to the road, they probably won’t hear.”

 

“ _Now_ who’s a car thief?” Kurt snickered, sliding into the truck. “I’ll get in, you push.”

 

“Why am I pushing?”

 

“Because you said I could drive. If it looks like someone’s heard us, I’ll start the truck, and you hop in the back.” He shut the door quietly and popped it into neutral.

 

Blaine pushed it out the door easily, stopping to close the garage. Kurt was sitting stock still in the driver’s seat, and Blaine resumed pushing, looking up to make sure Kurt was steering, and realizing with a shock like electricity that he couldn’t see Kurt in the rear view mirror, but he could see the driver’s seat.

 

He bit back the instinctive exclamation with a glance at the house, still dark and quiet, and pushed as Kurt steered until the truck was on the road. He hauled himself into the passenger seat and closed the door, noting Kurt’s stick straight spine and keeping his mouth shut. He glanced at the side mirror, looking for his own reflection, just to be sure.

 

Nothing.

 

“I guess we know why Sebastian didn’t have any mirrors,” Kurt said with a quiet sigh, turning the key in the ignition. The truck sputtered and started, unexpectedly loudly, and Kurt pushed it into drive, taking off down the road faster than Blaine thought was safe to drive, not that he was going to say anything. “I’m tired of surprises.”

 

“So am I,” Blaine said. “Believe me, so am I.”

 

~*~

 

The interstate stretched in front of them, and Kurt was acutely aware of the stolen nature of their truck as well as the short time left before dawn, but at least they were heading north for sure now. They’d skirted around Minneapolis, as much as they’d been able, and Kurt wished that they’d thought to find a map rather than relying on his own loose grasp of geography.

 

Blaine was quiet beside him, so quiet that Kurt thought he’d fallen asleep, but every time he glanced over, his eyes were open and staring out the windshield.

 

“Are you okay?” Kurt asked finally, breaking the silence that hung around them like a shroud. “You’re quiet.”

 

Blaine shrugged wearily. “I think I’m having hard time dealing with this.” The corners of his mouth pulled into a frown, and he tipped his head back against the headrest.

 

Kurt groped for his hand, alternately looking at the road and at Blaine. "What's wrong, honey?"

 

"We're fleeing the country, we've both been recently murdered, and I'm the one that murdered you," Blaine said incredulously. "I'm sure there are ways that things could be worse, because I've been imagining them in my spare time, but, uh, everything's pretty wrong."

 

"Oh, _honey_ ," Kurt said, sympathy welling up. He found Blaine's hand and squeezed gently. "It's going to be okay. We have a truck, and we're escaping to Canada, and we're going to get married."

 

"About that. I, uh, I think that we have to re-think the whole getting married thing."

 

A million terrible thoughts rushed through his head, and Kurt looked at Blaine hard. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

 

"No? Maybe? I'm having a hard time reading your mind right now, especially when you're looking at me like that and also driving." Kurt relented, looking back at the road, and willed himself to not be angry, to not jump to the very worst conclusion.

 

"You should explain what you mean then, instead of saying things like that and expecting me to know what you're saying," Kurt said through gritted teeth.

 

"Okay, okay!" Blaine held his hands up in apologetic surrender. "I just meant, well, how old are you?"

 

"Seventeen?"

 

"And how old am I?" Blaine asked.

 

"Sixteen, or, hang on," Kurt said, doing the math in his head. Blaine's birthday had been coming up when he'd died, but he wasn't quite sure what day it was now. "You're seventeen, now, I think. So we'll have to wait to turn eighteen? Or are you trying to say that we're too young to get married? Because we're in a slightly different place, life-wise, than Rachel and Finn are, and I don't think age is going to be a factor."

 

"I guess those are good points, but what I'm actually saying is that I'm not seventeen." Blaine looked at him meaningfully, but Kurt was still lost.

 

"I'm pretty sure you are, actually. It was coming up, and it's been at least a week, hasn't it?"

 

"No, see, those were trick questions. I'm not legally seventeen, and I'm never going to be either, because I'm legally and actually dead, and corpses don’t age."

 

"Oh, _that_. You might have a point, even if I’m not sure they were actually trick questions. I don't think dead people are allowed to get married, no matter how old they are," Kurt said thoughtfully. "Also, are Americans allowed to get married in Canada at all? There’s probably double the red tape for American dead people."

 

"See? I wasn't trying to say I didn't want to marry you. I was saying that it might be kind of difficult."

 

"I see." Kurt allowed the truck to lapse back into silence as he mulled it over. "Can we still pretend that we're going to get married? I was really looking forward to marrying you."

 

Blaine didn't answer, but Kurt heard him sniffling and rubbed his thumb along his wrist.

 

"Do you want to sing about it?" he offered. "You can't really do any jumping around, but it might make you feel better anyway."

 

"I dunno," Blaine said glumly. "I don't know if I have any songs in my repertoire for this kind of situation."

 

"Well, _we_ do. Made a wrong turn, once or twice-"

 

Kurt paused to see if Blaine would join in. "Dug my wa-ay-ay out, blood and fire," he sang pointedly, waiting for Blaine to pick up the melody.

 

Blaine sighed audibly. "Bad decisions, that's alright," he mumbled. "Welcome to my silly life."

 

Kurt snorted instead of continuing. "I know you can do better than that, Blaine, come on."

 

Blaine skipped into the chorus, speaking the lines in a monotone. "Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel, like you're nothing, you are perfect. Pretty-"

 

"Fine, point made,” Kurt interrupted. “I was just trying to cheer you up, but fine. We don't have to sing. We can sit here quietly until we reach the border, and then we can quietly sneak across it, and then we can quietly hide until someone comes for us.”

 

The silence was heavier now, and Kurt focused on the road.

 

~*~

 

Blaine glanced at the clock and frowned, watching Kurt follow his gaze out of the corner of his eye. “We’re going to have to find a place to hide for the day soon,” he said, breaking the quiet that had hung for- well, five minutes, but it had felt like hours.

 

“Oh, are we talking now? Or are we still ruining songs by being grumpy?” Kurt was turning anyway, leaving the interstate in favour of a rural road that led into the woods.

 

Blaine let his head hang in an exaggerated display of remorse. “Sorry.”

 

“I guess I probably shouldn’t have pushed you, but usually when you say you don’t want to sing, you just want someone to insist that you sing. How was I supposed to know?”

 

“I’m sorry, seriously I am. I know you meant well.”

 

Kurt patted his hand, but otherwise drove carefully down the road, which was steadily getting bumpier. “I think that if we can find somewhere secluded enough, we can just hide under the truck. It won’t be very comfortable, but it’ll be safe from the sun.”

 

Blaine craned his neck over into the truck box, looking at the wooden box that butted up against the cab. “There might be something in there, too. Like a tarp or a blanket or something, so at least we won’t be on the ground.”

 

“Campground up ahead,” Kurt said, pointing to the sign. “Want to try it?”

 

“Maybe you just stop the truck on the road, and I’ll go check it out. So if it’s populated by, I don’t even know, hostile Bigfoots? we can just make a run for it.” Blaine ignored Kurt incredulously mouthing ‘hostile Bigfoots?’ and looked pointedly at him. He didn’t particularly want a repeat of running for their lives from werewolves, especially not so close to dawn.

 

Kurt shrugged and pulled over, whispering “Be careful,” as Blaine slid out of the truck.

 

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

 

Gravel squished into mud as he walked on it, the last traces of a spring rain underfoot. He couldn’t see any lights ahead, but it was a fair distance down the road before he came to the campsite, which was really more of a clearing in the woods around a cul-de-sac. It was completely empty, and hopefully would stay that way, but the sun was lighting up the sky to the east, and they didn’t have time to find another place.

 

A dull thrumming alerted Blaine to something coming, the quiet heartbeats of wildlife replaced by an engine, but not the truck. It was coming from the opposite direction, for one thing, and it sounded like it was in the sky, for another.

 

As it got closer and louder, Blaine recognized it as a helicopter, flying low and fast, and the way his stomach dropped out from under him in dread was enough impetus to turn and run, slipping in the mud as he dashed for the truck.

 

Coach Beiste had said that she’d put a tracker in Kurt, that the Department of Former Humans would find them and protect them, but Blaine didn’t think that they’d approach so threateningly, and he had to get back to Kurt. Hiding was better than expecting them to be friendly.

 

He glanced over his shoulder and saw the spotlight, scanning the trees behind him, and leapt off the road, pressing himself behind a tree. The spotlight passed him by, but the helicopter turned, making another pass over him before turning again and heading for the main road, and Blaine had played enough Call of Duty to know that whoever was in there had something that could see him.

 

“Stay calm,” he mumbled. “Okay. If it’s thermal goggles or something, you’re already colder than a normal person, and you probably just barely show up. Go, get Kurt, and then find something to hide under. Just like in the game. Except they probably have guns, and you don’t.”

 

He could hear Kurt’s slow heartbeat, distinctive against the backdrop of helicopter, coming closer, and then Kurt was beside him. “I don’t think they’re friendly,” he breathed. “There’s a whole bunch of them coming down the road. I had to ditch the truck.”

 

“How did they find us?” Blaine whispered.

 

Kurt gestured at his throat. “My guess is that the frequency of this tracker isn’t as confidential as Coach Beiste thought. I thought that we were doing pretty well at staying unnoticed, except for the werewolves and truck theft.”

 

“Those are pretty big exceptions, but they’re too close to not have known exactly where we are. What do you think the chances are that it’s Coach Beiste’s people?”

 

“Slim. There are a _lot_ of them, Blaine, they’re expecting a fight.”

 

“Well, let’s try not to give them a fight, but we need a plan and a place to hide. It’s almost dawn, and I think they have thermal imaging or something like that.”

 

“…I don’t even know what that is, what do you mean?”

 

“I mean they can see our body heat and track us by that even though it’s dark and we’re pretty much totally cold anyway.”

 

The helicopter was coming back again, and Kurt flinched away from him. “We should run, probably.”

 

Blaine didn’t answer, grabbing Kurt’s hand and pulling him through trees, jumping over bushes and stumbling through the undergrowth that was still thin from winter. “If they can track me,” Kurt said between jumps, “then we’re going to have to deal with that tracker.”

 

“How? It’s in your _neck_ , Kurt, that’s going to make it difficult to remove- oh. Oh! Gross, are you seriously saying that we need to take it out?”

 

“Well, first I’d like to make sure that it’s me they’re tracking, because that’s a lot of discomfort to go through without being sure-”

 

“I think ‘discomfort’ might not be strong enough a word, Kurt-”

 

“-and we have to make sure that they aren’t here to help us, too. Stop running.”

 

Blaine stopped, and Kurt looked at him. “We’ll be able to find each other again. I can hear you and smell you from miles away, so I swear that we’ll find each other again. We have to split up. You find a place to hide for the day, and I’ll find out who they are.” Blaine tried to protest, but Kurt overrode him, pointing emphatically to the rapidly lightening east. “Look at the _sky_ , we’re out of time. Find a place, then come find me.”

 

Kurt turned and ran, shooing Blaine in the opposite direction.

 

The helicopter buzzed closer again, adjusting course as it neared Blaine to chase after Kurt only. His fangs itched and his hands shook at the thought of removing- what a clean word for what he’d have to do to find it- the transmitter, and he ran, searching for a cave, an overhang, anything.

 

~*~

 

The helicopter changed course every time he did, tailing him closely, and Kurt realized that they were trying to simply outwait him. Why they hadn’t waited a couple more hours until he and Blaine would have been trapped in their shelter was beyond him, but at least they had a chance. A chance that probably involved Blaine tearing his neck open, but it was still a chance.

 

He turned once more, heading toward the concentration of human scents and sounds that had formed where the truck had been, and the helicopter sped up, apparently taking it as a threat.

 

Something exploded with a pop beside him into a cloud of gas, and Kurt reacted before he’d even registered the noise, veering away from it and the people. The noxious scent clung to his eyes and lips, choking in his throat as he realized it was garlic, that they were trying to incapacitate him.

 

“Definitely not here to help,” he concluded, biting back every swear word he’d ever heard as they threatened to spill from his lips and doubling back under the helicopter, towards Blaine.

 

And then the world lit up around him in a shock of burning bright light, and Kurt stumbled and fell, unable to open his eyes in the face of the helicopter’s spotlight, as bright as the sun and nearly as painful. They’d just been waiting to turn around so they could hit him with it from the front, and it had hit hard. He kicked at the ground, slow and heavy, hiding his burning face in his hands, but knowing that he had to stand up, had to run, but before he could get his feet back under himself, ungentle hands grabbed his arms, hoisting him up and dragging him away from the light.

 

He was out of the light, brightness replaced by pitch black, but his eyes refused to open. He could feel, though, and the arms around him were familiar. He let Blaine guide him, running with his eyes closed until he was abruptly lowered to the ground again. The burning in his eyes slowly subsided until he could open them and see Blaine, rubbing at his own eyes. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he joked. “People are going to start to think you _like_ dragging me around.”

 

“Well, there are definitely worse things,” Blaine said, a tiny spark of amusement playing about his deep frown. “That was just cruel of them.”

 

Kurt looked up at the sky, the thwack-thwack-thwack of helicopter blades turning to follow them again. “Yeah, and here they come again. They’re following me, and that means that tracker has to come out, or we aren’t going to make it through the day. I’d do it myself, but I can’t actually reach my neck.”

 

“Excuses, excuses,” Blaine said, trying for light-hearted but clearly distressed. “We don’t have much time, so uh...” He put his hands on Kurt’s throat, gently massaging, fingers probing at his skin. “Can you feel anything?”

 

Kurt held still, focusing on the feeling of Blaine pressing at his throat, but nothing moved or shifted. “Nothing,” he sighed, except the motion of his breath moved _something_ , and by the way Blaine’s finger froze, he felt it too. He looked up at Blaine meaningfully, worried that if he talked again the tiny bulge would disappear.

 

“I feel it,” Blaine said, barely moving his lips. “I’ll, just, um…”

 

He leaned down, fangs scraping against Kurt’s skin, and he couldn’t help the panicked little inhale. Blaine patted his chest soothingly, but didn’t move again. “I don’t think I can do this,” he said, but he had to, he had to take it out or he had to run and leave Kurt and Kurt didn’t want to be left even more than he didn’t want to be bitten. Kurt lifted his arm, pressing Blaine’s face closer to his neck in a silent plea to do it.

 

The bite was sudden, unexpected despite himself, but he could barely feel the tearing of his flesh as Blaine pushed the pain and instinctual urge to struggle away. It was cold, calm, hypnotic, as Blaine worked at his neck, but it made the sudden roaring of pain that much worse when Blaine detached and forced his fingers into the hole he’d made, moving tissue aside as he searched for the tracker.

 

He heard Blaine hiss in what was hopefully triumph, and then the fingers were gone and he was being scooped up into a bridal carry. He considered protesting, but his throat was currently growing back, and that was distracting enough without trying to run.

 

“Did you get it?” he asked when his voice came back, tapping Blaine on the shoulder.

 

“All gone,” Blaine said shakily. “We’re almost to the place I found, it’s going to be okay.”

 

 _Except for the part where the good guys won’t be able to track us anymore, and we might not be hidden well enough to escape tonight. Other than that, it’s going to be just_ \- “Peachy,” Kurt said as Blaine put him down, staring at the fair sized hole in a rock face under an overhang. “What’s in it?”

 

“There wasn’t anything when I checked, and there’s enough room for both of us. Limited time, remember,” Blaine said, a little hurt. “All we can do at this point is be quiet and hope.”

 

“No, you did a good job, honey,” Kurt said quickly. “I was just wondering if we were going to be sharing with a bear.” He dropped to his knees and squeezed in his shoulders, sliding into the crevice and wriggling to the back, where there was just enough room for him to stretch out his legs. Blaine followed him in, pressing close in the confined space, and Kurt wrapped his arms around him. He could feel the sun coming up in the way weariness began to gather in his bones, and every part of him screamed that it was time for sleep, despite the stress, and despite the fact that he’d just had his throat destroyed for the second time. And Blaine had been forced to do it.

 

He rubbed a hand up Blaine’s arm to his shoulder, “You did really well, sweetie. I know that last part must’ve been, um, hard on you.”

 

He felt Blaine shrug, but his forehead pressed into Kurt’s collarbone with a desperation that made him want to pull him impossibly closer. “It’s okay, hey, shh,” he whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

 

“I don’t think it is.”

 

“Well,” Kurt said firmly, “I do, so it is. Go to sleep, and we’ll figure this out when we wake up.”

 

Blaine murmured something that might have been “I love you,” but Kurt barely heard it, the rising sun ushering him into sleep.

 

~*~

 

End Part Five


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the occasion of my birthday (god I'm old), the second to last part of failpires. If you aren't cool with cliffhangers, I suggest you wait for the last part. <3

Part Six

 

Kurt was gone in sleep already, jaw slack and the tight grip he’d held around Blaine loosened, but Blaine clung to awareness, the taste of blood (of Kurt’s blood, and the reminder had him clenching his jaw) lingering in his throat. He listened carefully, waiting for the sound of people moving outside the crevice that would spell out how doomed they were.

 

He held his breath, forcing his eyes to stay open, and listened around Kurt’s impossibly slow breaths. There was nothing he could hear, not even the people that he knew had to be there, the only sound reaching them the wind rustling through the trees.

 

A distant _rat-tat-tat_ staccato changed that. He strained to hear it, a tiny burst of alarm helping him to keep his eyes open. The air was dead inside their crevice, no scent reaching in, but Blaine thought that it must be gunfire.

 

He didn’t know why there would be shooting if it wasn’t at them, but it was far enough away that they had to be safe for now. Either way, the shock was fading again after the initial rush without any obvious immediate danger to them, and the sun was pushing him into sleep. Blaine’s arms were heavy, his eyes forcing their way shut despite himself, and he gave up.

 

~*~

 

When he awoke, everything was quiet, and Kurt was gone. He panicked for a moment until he heard him moving around outside the crevice, his distinctively slow breathing and heartbeat a giveaway.

 

He rolled over and poked his head out of the gap, blinking in the twilight. Kurt was leaning against a tree, and turned to look at Blaine, smiling slightly. “I guess they didn’t find us. I don’t know how, but I haven’t heard or seen anyone.”

 

Blaine pulled himself out and upright, brushing himself off. “There was a sound last night-this morning, I mean. I think it was gunfire.”

 

“I didn’t hear it,” Kurt said looking around like he could see traces of it still.

 

“You fell asleep really fast. It was just after dawn.” Blaine wasn’t really confident that it had been gunshots, the sounds already blurring in his memory. “I was falling asleep, I’m not really sure if it was or not. But I think it was.”

 

“Okay,” Kurt said, wrinkling his nose in concentration. “I think we need to find out why they were shooting at each other before we head north again. Without the tracker the good guys aren’t going to be able to find us, so we’re going to have to take care of ourselves for a while. We can’t do that if we don’t know who they are.”

 

Blaine shrugged agreement. “So, we go back to where they were?”

 

“At least we’ll be able to get our bearings again, even if we can’t really find any clues. It’s in the right direction, isn’t it?”

 

Blaine really didn’t know. In the confusion of the morning coming, he’d lost all track of which way was north. “Maybe? I think we need to find the road again to be sure.”

 

“Well, then I guess we don’t really have a choice except to go back.” Kurt stopped and gave him a _look_. “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Blaine said, waving a hand. “Are _you_ okay?”

 

“Well, between the dying while still grieving for my dead boyfriend, the being on the run, the werewolves, the cows, and having a tracking device _bitten_ out of me, it would be weird if I was actually okay, but I guess I am,” Kurt said, reaching out and taking his hand. “I know it’s not the kindest thing to say, especially this far from my facial kit, but you look tired.”

 

He felt tired, too, but Kurt looked just as bad as he felt. “I think we’re both tired, and that we need to find a place that’s safe.” Kurt stroked his thumb over his hand, and even that small gesture was surprisingly comforting. “That’s not here, though, so we should go,” he added.

 

“If you say so,” Kurt said, a little playfully. “The mossy décor has really been growing on me. We could build a little hut, stalk deer and campers at night, stuff like that. Vampire paradise.” He chuckled at his own joke and started walking back up the route they’d taken that morning.

 

“I know what you mean. I don’t know if I’ll be able to live in a city again after being hunted down by people with guns in a forest. So many fond memories.” Blaine squeezed Kurt’s hand, the reassuring warmth that it had held gone, but the familiar fit and comforting weight still there.

 

Kurt didn’t reply, walking a bit faster, but he wiped a palm across his cheek tellingly. Blaine pulled his hand, dragging him to a stop, and stepped ahead of him so they were face-to-face and he could see the way Kurt’s lip was trembling. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping away a tear from Kurt’s face with his thumb. “I thought we were joking, it’s not funny that there are people with guns after us.”

 

Kurt shook his head, sucking in a shaky breath. “It’s not that, it’s stupid,” he mumbled, shaking off Blaine’s hand and walking past him, crossing his arms.

 

“It’s not stupid, you’re upset.” Kurt didn’t answer, speeding up until Blaine had to break into a slight jog to keep up with his stride. “Kurt, I can’t help if you won’t tell me what’s wrong. Please.”

 

“I want to go home,” he said quickly, wiping away his tears again, his jaw trembling a little. “And it’s stupid because it’s not like you want to be here anymore than I do, but you’re not whining about it. And it’s extra stupid that I made myself cry by making a joke about staying here.”

 

“That’s still not stupid.” Blaine caught up, laying a hand along Kurt’s back. “And I’ve had my moments, too, you were there, and you’re not whining.”

 

“Fine, it’s not whining,” Kurt capitulated. “It’s not helpful either, so can we please just drop this until we’re somewhere safe?”

 

“If you say so,” Blaine said dubiously. “Stop for just a second though?”

 

Kurt obeyed, and Blaine swept him into a tight hug, squeezing just until Kurt relaxed the tiniest fraction into his arms and then letting go. “Okay. Did that help at all?” He could feel the knot of despair in his own stomach unknot a little at the contact, but he wasn’t the one crying at the moment.

 

He nodded, his eyes still damp but no more new tears forming. “I think so.”

 

Blaine stroked a hand down his back and took his hand. “Shall we go then?” he asked.

 

“We shall,” Kurt said with a watery smile.

 

~*~

 

It was carnage.

 

Blood hung heavily on the air as they approached, despite the light wind blowing away from them, and dead people lay scattered on the ground. There wasn’t a hint of life, no hearts beating, no blood pumping, but at least he didn’t feel any compulsion to drink blood from the corpses. He felt like he needed to feed, weak and shaky from removing the tracker, but not from them, and he was grateful for that. It would’ve been a new and awful addition to the things he couldn’t control anymore, but at least it hadn’t occurred to him until after he’d disproved it.

 

Kurt walked closer to Blaine anyway.

 

Most of the bodies were facedown, and he was grateful for that, at least, but in some cases the bullet wounds that had killed them had also exploded out of their backs, leaving a mess that Kurt couldn’t bear to look at. It looked like there had been two distinct groups, and maybe the good guys had come for them after all, and now they were dead.

 

Neither of them spoke, not willing to break the silence that had fallen over them after they’d smelled blood, until they found the road. Most of the trucks Kurt had seen that morning were gone, but a few remained, doors ajar and some windows missing, shot out and shattered on the ground.

 

“They didn’t all die, then,” Kurt said quietly. “There was someone left to take those trucks.”

 

“There’s no one left here now, though, and we don’t know if anyone was here to help us or if it was something else entirely.”

 

“I think it has to have been about us,” Kurt said. “Unless there’s a _lot_ more going on than we know about. It doesn’t make sense that they’d have a firefight out here otherwise, and I’m sure that they were tracking us this morning.”

 

Blaine nodded agreement. “We should go, then, before someone comes back. We know that there was a fight, and a lot of people died. There’s nothing else here.”

 

A nearby corpse caught Kurt’s eye, this one face-up, a piece of plastic dangling from one of her pockets. He stepped past Blaine, carefully pulling it from her pocket. It turned out to be an identification badge, from _the FBI oh god_. Kurt dropped it in shock, whirling to face Blaine, who had come up behind him to look over his shoulder.

 

“FBI?” he whispered, stooping to pick it up again. “Kurt. She’s from the Department of Former Humans. Like Coach Beiste.”

 

The woman’s half-lidded eyes stared back at him, and Kurt had to look away. There was another body nearby, this one face down in the dirt, and he walked over to him, turning him over slowly to let the rifle he held slide out of his limp hands, and patting his pockets. There was nothing in them, even when he hesitantly touched the pockets on the man’s heavy duty trousers, and the bloodstained breast pocket on his shirt.

 

“What are you doing?” Blaine asked.

 

“She was from the FBI. He doesn’t even have a wallet.” Blaine reached out, and Kurt accepted the help back to his feet. “These are the people who came for us at Sebastian’s house, and they got interrupted by the FBI while they were looking for us today.” Kurt edged away from the corpse. “I think.”

 

His hand had a smear of blood on it, and he tried to shake it off before giving up and spreading his fingers apart so he didn’t have to feel any of the tackiness.

 

“We should go,” Blaine said uneasily.

 

“I don’t understand,” Kurt said. “All the trucks look like the ones that were here earlier, but the FBI people had to have them too, right? Otherwise how did they get here?”

 

“Maybe they left them up the road and came in on foot so they could flank them.” Kurt stared, and Blaine shrugged. “Call of Duty. My parents were wrong about it being a waste of time, clearly.”

 

“They weren’t wrong,” Kurt said, staring at the rifle, considering it despite himself. If they came back, they’d be unprotected, but Kurt didn’t think he could even bring himself to touch it. “I’m not touching that gun.”

 

“No,” Blaine said. “Pulling the trigger on a controller is different from pulling the trigger on something like _that_.” He swung a hand at the gun, lying almost innocently on the ground, except for the corpse still resting a hand on it.

 

Kurt shivered, and the urge to run became suddenly overwhelming. The woods were dark, and there were dead people strewn through them. “You were right,” he said. “We should go.”

 

Blaine nodded uneasily. “This way?” he asked, pointing up the road, in what Kurt thought was the direction of the highway.

 

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Kurt admitted. “We can go that way and hope that we find the road to the campsite, and then we’ll know?”

 

Blaine nodded. “Anything that gets us away from this.”

 

The smell of blood faded as they went, walking at first, but then running. The dark woods had seemed safe the morning before, well, they had before the armed men had shown up, but now in every shadow lurked a faceless person with a gun, lying in wait. Kurt knew that there was no one there, that any human would have an audible heartbeat, but it didn’t stop the fear he was feeling. Guns could shoot far, and he didn’t know how far their sounds would reach.

 

“Wait, there,” Kurt exclaimed, too loud, far too loud. He pulled Blaine to a stop and dropped his voice to continue. “That’s it right? That’s where we were this morning.”

 

The truck was gone, but Kurt was sure that it was the right place. An even smaller dirt road curved off into the trees off of the one they were on, and the intersection was scattered with deep tire treads.

 

“I think it is,” Blaine said. “I mean, here’s hoping? I don’t want to turn around.”

 

The wind shifted, just slightly, and brought with it a new scent, unmistakeably human. Kurt grabbed Blaine’s wrist, stopping him from stepping forward. “There’s someone here,” he hissed, pulling him off the road, away from the person and the open air.

 

Blaine looked over his shoulder, letting Kurt steer them behind a pine tree. “I see them, I think,” he said quietly. “They’re up a tree, not too far down the road. There’s no way they didn’t see us.”

  
“What if they can’t see in the dark?” Kurt asked, peering around the side of the tree. He couldn’t see anyone, but the wind was still blowing, and he knew that there was someone there.

 

“Then they probably didn’t see us, and I think they’re too far to have heard us.” Blaine whispered lightly. “They aren’t moving.”

 

“I can’t see anyone at all, where are you looking?” Kurt leaned a little further, and a little flash of light up in a tree caught his attention. “Oh, I think I-”

 

“Gun gun gun gun _gun_ ,” Blaine gasped out, tugging Kurt back behind the tree. The shot filled the air at the same instant, and Kurt was sure that he’d felt its wake as it passed his face. The stayed like that, huddled close and hoping they were shielded from view.

 

“I have a question,” Kurt whispered after a tense minute of waiting for another shot. Blaine looked at him, raising an eyebrow, and he continued. “Why is it that when you said there was a person in a tree we didn’t immediately assume that they would be shooting at us? What other reason could someone have for being in a tree at midnight?”

 

“Tree climbing?” Blaine suggested. “Maybe night-time tree climbing is a thing for some people. I don’t judge.”

 

“I think that maybe we should stop assuming the best of people,” Kurt said. “They always turn out to be murderous vampires or werewolves who really hate trespassers or people with sniper rifles.”

 

“Speaking of sniper rifles,” Blaine said, switching tacks in that graceful way he had. “What do we do about this one? He’s probably just waiting for us to move.”

 

“What if we moved really, really fast?” Kurt said, trying to look through the branches to where he hoped the shooter still was. “And possibly in different directions, but I don’t really want to split up.”

 

“I vote no splitting up, because that hasn’t ended well yet.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Kurt said, affronted. “We haven’t been captured. I think that’s the definition of ending well.”

 

“Last time we split up, you got caught by a _light_ ,” Blaine pointed out. “If I hadn’t come, you would’ve been in a lot of trouble.”

 

“But if we hadn’t split up, we wouldn’t have known for sure that they were following my tracker,” Kurt argued. “Would you have taken it out if you hadn’t known for _sure_ that it needed to happen?”

 

“I just- I just don’t want to split up again, okay?” Blaine said softly.

 

“I don’t want to either, why would I?”

 

“Then why are we arguing?”

 

“Because you said that splitting up ends badly when it doesn’t.”

 

The gunman apparently got tired of waiting for them and shot again, the bullet thunking audibly into the tree trunk, and Kurt bit back the urge to tell him off for interrupting.

 

“We should probably do something,” he suggested instead. “We’ll have lots of time to discuss me being right when we’re not being shot at.”

 

“Okay, except I’m pretty sure we’ll be discussing how _I’m_ right. Which way? I think we should go in the general direction of the highway. They won’t be able to shoot at us if there are people around.”

 

Kurt nodded, trying to psyche himself up into running into the path of bullets. _“It’s just like going out onto a stage, except for the possible pain and agony. Except for the times when performing has involved pain and agony.”_ He sighed a little. _“And now I’m thinking of Finn and Rachel kissing onstage.”_

 

“What is it?” Blaine whispered.

 

“Nothing, nothing. Ready?” Blaine nodded, and Kurt reached for his hand blindly, not willing to look away from his face.

 

Blaine laced their fingers together and kissed him gently, just a peck. “It’s going to be okay.”

 

“I think that’s my line.” Kurt smiled at Blaine, and they burst out running.

 

~*~

 

Maybe heading for the highway wasn’t the best course of action, since it kept them in the shooter’s range for the longest possible time.

 

Unfortunately, that thought didn’t occur to Blaine until they were already past him, but at least they were both free of bullet holes and putting distance between them.

 

“That’s weird,” Kurt said suddenly, hopping over a fallen log.

 

“What is?” Blaine dodged around a thistle bush, a bullet zipping past him and kicking up dirt several yards ahead.

 

“Do you hear that?”

 

Blaine focused on the sounds around them. The sniper was still shooting, but less frequently. He could hear water in the distance, and the a low rumbling that quickly resolved into the sounds of engines in the distance.

 

“Is it the helicopter again?” he asked.

 

“I don’t know, but we’re still really far from the highway. I think we’re going to have company.”

 

“We _have_ company, Kurt, there’s someone shooting at us.” As if to punctuate his point, a shot rang out, skimming his side. “Ow ow ow owwww,” Blaine gasped, clamping his free hand over the long score along his ribs.

 

“Are you okay?” Kurt was on him immediately, stopping dead in his tracks and half-carrying him behind a tree. “Where is it? Is it bad?”

 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Blaine said through clenched teeth. He could feel the torn skin already knitting back together, and the pain was fading. “He just got lucky.”

 

“If he didn’t have a gun, I’d be showing him exactly how lucky he is,” Kurt said, jaw jutting out obstinately. “He has no right-”

 

The shot was louder than others had been, closer, and from a different angle, behind Kurt and above them. Blaine registered the muzzle flash, but didn’t quite understand it until he saw Kurt jerk forward, slowly, the world was so slow suddenly, and collapse.

 

The pain hit a moment later, knocking his knees out from under him, emanating out from his chest in a burning wave, but Kurt was falling too, and Blaine couldn’t comprehend how _he’d_ been shot if Kurt had been standing between him and the gun, refused to know why Kurt was falling until he saw the blood, thick and dark and slow, soaking into his shirt from the hole in his chest.

 

His knees hit the ground, and he bounced a little, unable to hold himself steady, and slipping forward until his weight was on his elbows. The impact jarred _everything_ , and the world disappeared for a moment, his vision fading back to see Kurt hit the ground hip-first and slump, his eyes closed tight and his teeth clenched like he was trying not to scream.

 

Kurt whimpered, his eyes slitting open, and reached out for him, fingers scraping against the dirt. “Blaine?” he mouthed, sound barely escaping. “You’re bleeding.” He sucked in a breath, slow and wheezing, and whined softly.

 

The expansion of Blaine’s chest was agonizing, any movement was, he could _feel_ the bullet inside of him, moving through him as the wound slowly healed from the inside out. “I’m fine, it’s fine,” he forced out, looking up to where he knew the second shooter was. Against the sky, he could see the dim outline of a person, high in a tree and motionless. “You’re hurt.”

 

Kurt nodded, but didn’t speak. Blaine couldn’t look at the gunman anymore, didn’t want to know if there was another shot coming when he couldn’t do anything about it. “I can’t get up,” Kurt mumbled finally.

 

“It’s okay,” Blaine soothed, stroking Kurt’s hair away from his forehead, determinedly moving his arm against the protests of his body. “I’m not going anywhere. Even if I could.”

 

A beam of light illuminated Kurt’s face, casting his features into relief, and then it was gone again. He forced his head around to see a large truck pulling to a stop on the road and turned back to see Kurt staring at it, his neck craned to see around Blaine.

 

“Can you run?” he whispered.

 

Kurt shook his head. “It’s not healing fast enough.” He gasped in a breath. “Maybe. Can you?”

 

“Maybe.” Healing the gunshot wound was sapping him, and Blaine felt weaker and weaker on top of the pain that refused to give him a break. “I’m not leaving you, though, so it doesn’t matter.”

 

Kurt slumped back down to the ground, the muscles of his neck relaxing, and bit his lip. “I wasn’t going to ask you to leave me,” he said, quietly, with a hint of joking outrage. “How dare you suggest it, Blaine Anderson. Till death do us part, remember? What kind of vampire husband do you think I am?”

 

Blaine couldn’t hold back a tiny laugh at Kurt’s audacity that turned into a moan of pain when he aggravated his injury. “I’m very sorry.” He meant to say it lightly, a joking reply to a joking statement, but he couldn’t keep the weight of guilt out of his voice. Everything had started with him.

 

People were jumping out of the back of the truck, and the woods were getting artificially lighter as floodlights were turned on. Blaine flinched as one hit them and stayed on, but it didn’t burn the way the helicopter’s spotlight had.

 

“Do you remember that church?” Kurt said suddenly. “When I asked if you thought real bullets could kill us? Jumping off a building didn’t. Losing most of my throat didn’t. He must still have us in his sights, but he’s not shooting anymore. Do you think that if they shoot us enough times, we die?” He didn’t give Blaine a chance to answer. “Is it better than being experimented on in a lab?”

 

Blaine didn’t know what Kurt wanted him to say, but he knew what he wanted. “I vote for the third option, where we run away to Canada and no one ever chases us again.”

 

“I like that one better too.” Blaine could hear the crunch of branches underfoot as people began to slowly walk into the woods. They knew where they were, they had to, and Blaine didn’t know why they’d move slowly. Kurt looked up at him, blinking rapidly, his pupils dilated despite the light, and flashed his teeth at him. “I guess we’d better work on making that happen, then.”

 

And then he _moved_ , leaping off the ground so fast that he blurred, hissing in obvious pain and dragging Blaine up with him. Fireworks exploded in front of his eyes at the sudden motion, and every fiber of his body screamed at him to lie down, wait until it got better, but there was no turning back.

 

The air was alive with shouts and the occasional gunshot, but they were running and stumbling and running again, brushing around trees and ducking under branches. His chest was a mess of agonized nerves, his legs weak and rubbery, and Blaine knew he couldn’t keep it up for long, but maybe they could do it long enough to get away.

 

It was dark again within moments, the lights a shining beacon of where they’d been, and the noise was dropping away. Blaine stumbled over a root and couldn’t catch himself, falling back to his knees, and Kurt pulled him behind yet another tree.

 

After a frenzied moment of gasping for breath that never seemed enough, it seemed that even vampires could run out of air, Blaine looked at Kurt, who was sitting on the ground and clutching at his chest. He looked half-dead, and Blaine regretted that mental comparison as soon as he’d made it, but it was the truth. His face was grey in the darkness, and he was listing towards Blaine.

 

Blaine shook himself out of admiring his neck, and realized that hunger was creeping up on him. There was a line between ogling in a romantic way and in a creepy vampire way, and he thought that doing it after he’d been shot and as he moaned in pain had to fall into creepy vampire territory.

 

“I feel like I’m dying again,” Kurt observed, voice dry. “I don’t think I can run anymore.”

 

“Are you healing?” Blaine asked, wiggling closer so they could lean against each other. Survival instincts were beginning to push their way to the surface, a fog that he’d felt when he’d first woken up to Sebastian’s face above his. “I think I healed as much as I’m going to. I can’t feel the bullet moving anymore.”

 

“That’s gross,” Kurt said flatly. “And I’m not. It hurts and it’s not getting better. I’m just…tired. And hungry,” he admitted. “I’m feeling the urge to go and single out someone and tear them apart. I think I’m losing control.”

 

“At least they’ll deserve it?” Blaine said weakly.

 

“There isn’t a way to rationalize what we’ll do if someone gets close enough,” Kurt breathed out. “I know that you know that.”

 

Blaine nodded, not wanting to risk opening his mouth. The woods were silent, the wind nearly gone, but there were people looking for them. Even if his senses wouldn’t pick them up, had been betraying him all night, he knew that they were there.

 

A gentle weight settled onto his shoulder, Kurt’s hair brushing against his cheek, and stayed very still, only the dull thump of his heart moving him. “I’m sorry I got you into this,” Blaine whispered.

 

“You didn’t.” Kurt’s voice was quiet, so quiet that Blaine could barely hear it. “Do you remember what I said to you, that first morning?”

 

_I’m glad you’re not alone._

 

“Yes,” Blaine choked out.

 

“I love you. This isn’t your fault, and…just- don’t give up hope. There’s still a chance.”

 

It was hopeless. Kurt knew it was hopeless, the two of them alone and injured against a small army, and he was lying, but it made Blaine feel lighter to hear him say that there was hope anyway. “I love you too,” was what he said.

 

People were coming, their scents growing stronger and pulling harder at Blaine, and Kurt was growing restless behind him. He couldn’t stop Kurt if he attacked someone, Kurt couldn’t stop him, and there was nothing he could do but hold himself back for as long as he could.

 

As it turned out, it wasn’t very long.

 

~*~

 

End Part Six

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the end. It's a bit hard to believe that it took me almost 11 months to write a fic this short, but here we are (and don't ask about my other WIP). Thank you, as always, to ileliberte and narie, my intrepid and patient beta readers (and especially narie, because omg this was supposed to be her birthday fic and I'm publishing almost in time for her next one) I hope you enjoy it, and thank you all for reading ♥

Kurt remembered losing control, flitting from shadow to shadow as his body had tried to seek out familiar prey. The night he’d first fed blurred in his memory, his lucid moments bright spots in a sea of hunger and desperation and horrifying instinct.  
   
He was losing it again now. The bullet had torn through him, and he didn’t know enough to characterize it as clean or not, didn’t even really know what that meant, but he’d felt his lung collapse and then reinflate as the holes in it had closed, and his body was telling him,  _begging_ him, to find life and drain it dry.  
   
Blaine had saved his family from him the last time he hadn’t been able to resist the pull, but Blaine was lying limp against his back, and Kurt could hear people crunching through the woods towards them. Their scents were oddly faint for how close they had to be, and their heartbeats quiet, but they were there.  
   
When Blaine had been directly threatened, Kurt had attacked. Coach Beiste had held a gun on him, and he’d tried to tear her apart, all thought gone from his head. He wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of now. Hurting the people who were coming after them, probably killing them, being the monster he was afraid of, or being taken by them.  
   
Even as dull as his thoughts were as he sat there, Blaine’s weight heavy against him, breathing in useless air, Kurt knew that it didn’t matter what he was afraid of. He could feel himself sinking lower into a haze, and there was nothing to struggle against except himself.  
   
Blaine was gone, and he was aware of screams that weren’t his, but they were somehow too close and far away at the same time. All he could hear was the flow of blood in veins, the terrified pounding of hearts, and then there was a hot spatter of blood against his tongue that blotted everything else out. It was washing him away, and Kurt gave over.  
   
~*~  
   
Blaine came back to himself with a mouth that tasted of blood, healed bullet wounds, and the open-mouthed corpse of a man on the ground in front of him, blood still leaking from his throat. Blaine stared down, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, reconcile everything with the knowledge that  _he’d_  done that, and then the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of his head.  
   
“I know you speak English, and that you are yourself again,” a man’s voice said, a heavy yet unfamiliar accent colouring his words. “You’ve escaped us so far, but that’s over. If you so much as move, the other one will be killed. Speak if you understand.”  
   
The other one was Kurt, had to be Kurt, but Blaine couldn’t see him. “Don’t hurt him.” The words slipped out desperately. “Please don’t hurt him.” It was his fault. If he hadn’t listened to Sebastian this could have just been him, Kurt could be home safe. Kurt could say that he was glad to be with him as many times as he wanted, but Blaine couldn’t keep going if Kurt died because of him. Not again.  
   
“Injury to him was unavoidable, but if you surrender now, you will both be spared further.” There were people all around him, he could hear them despite their attempts to be quiet, the shifting of boots in dirt and the pounding of hearts filling Blaine’s ears, but he couldn’t hear Kurt, couldn’t smell anything but the blood of the man he’d just killed, and he didn’t move.  
   
“Place your hands behind your back, or I will shoot you in the head. It may or may not kill you, and I would prefer you to be undamaged, but I have lost enough men to this endeavour already. I have one vampire, and how he is treated will be affected by what you choose here. If you die, his life will be worse for it. If you attempt escape and fail, his death will be.”  
   
Blaine’s hands were shaking, maybe all of him was. “You could be lying about having Kurt,” he said.  
   
“The first shot passed through him, and into you. After that, you made one final attempt at escaping us, only to fall victim to your baser instincts and be drawn back to what you knew would not be easy prey. We’ve been chasing down your kind for a very long time, and though you and he both had the advantage in the initial attack, he was considerably weakened by the three subsequent shots that my group chose not to fire at you.” The man’s voice was clinical, cold, but the gun pressed harder. “He was wounded once in the clavicle, and twice in the abdomen, both on the right side below the navel, at which point he collapsed. You do not know that we have him, but are you willing to risk it? I will not tell you again to surrender.”  
   
Blaine wanted to kill him. He’d never known what anger was until that moment, and he wanted to kill him for talking about Kurt that way, for hurting him, for using him to force Blaine to give himself up. He slid his hands around to his back, waiting passively as another person approached from behind, this person scared in a way the one holding the gun wasn’t. He could hear it in his heartbeat, in his breathing, and this would be his last moment to escape. He could take advantage of the fear, spin away from the gun, hit them and run.  
   
They wouldn’t kill Kurt, if they even had him. They’d killed FBI agents, chased them across the country, and if he escaped and Kurt was dead, it all would’ve been for nothing. Blaine looked up, moving only his eyes, and wondered if he could run fast enough. He’d just killed a person, drunk his blood until he’d died, and he was strong again. He was already the monster, why should he pretend to be the boy? He could run, and then he could find Kurt and make them sorry for hurting them.  
   
He heard a radio, the voice fuzzy and too low for him to hear, but it was coming from the man with the gun, and it would be a distraction. It was an opportunity and he was going to take it, but as he tensed to move the gun barrel jerked down from his skull to the base of his neck, too sudden for him to react.  
   
The shot was deafening, but he didn’t feel it past the first shock of entry and shatter of bone. His body pitched forward on its own, collapsing onto the man he’d killed, and Blaine couldn’t move, couldn’t feel anything.  
   
“We’ve got incoming reported,” the man snapped, but his voice was dull, like Blaine was at the bottom of a deep hole that was somehow getting deeper by the second. “Get that up and return to the transports, we’re withdrawing in seven minutes, with or without you.”  
   
“Sir?”  
   
“Put the restraints on it and pick it up! God damn, should’ve just shot it in the first place, not  _negotiated_  with the fucking thi-”  
   
~*~  
   
Kurt hadn’t been cold since he’d died, hadn’t not known where Blaine was since they’d found each other again, but he was cold and stiff and Blaine was gone.  
   
He could still taste blood, could remember little flashes of horrified faces as he sprung, and he’d hurt people, more than one, more than he’d needed to, maybe, but not all of the blood he could taste belonged to other people. They’d had guns, and they’d been shooting at him, and he hadn’t even realized he’d been hit until he’d been already been away, running as fast as he could from the blood and the violence as soon as he’d regained control.  
   
He couldn’t remember feeding, but he knew that he must have, even if it hadn’t been enough. He’d torn at someone’s throat, he remembered that, but he’d been interrupted and had to run. His hands were still shaking and weak, but the fresh bullet wounds were slowly healing, and he could push his instincts down again and think clearly.  
   
Or he could’ve thought clearly, but all he could think of was Blaine, where he was, if he was okay, with a side of how much it hurt to be shot. There were still people chasing after him, too, and he had to decide what he was going to do.  
   
“Well, that’s obvious,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around himself tightly. “You’re going to go find Blaine, dummy.”  
   
That was easier said than done, but he was going to do it anyway, because he was still Kurt Hummel. Dying hadn’t changed that, and it wasn’t going to.  
   
~*~  
   
Feeling returned to Blaine’s body long after consciousness did, a creep of sensation that itched underneath his skin as his spinal cord fused back together, but it didn’t matter. His hands were locked behind him, his ankles attached to each other and then to his hands, and his mouth was held shut by tight bands around his face and head.  
   
He was screwed, whether he could feel it happening or not. They were approaching lights, the forest around them no longer as dark as it had been, and that meant the trucks. He remembered the dead FBI agent, and people who wanted to protect them had been there, maybe were coming now if Blaine was actually remembering what the man had said before he’d lost consciousness and not just wishfully inventing details, but the trucks meant that they’d be moving and he was done for.  
   
They broke out of the forest, the road dizzyingly upside down and brightly lit from his vantage point hanging over a shoulder. People were rushing around, loading the convoy of trucks, and Blaine was dropped abruptly to the gravel as he searched, straining his eyes for any trace of Kurt.  
   
“Get a container,” the man ordered brusquely. “We’re getting out here with one, at least.”  
   
It didn’t make sense for a second, and then he realized what that had to mean and the relief was so sudden it was like he’d been hit. They didn’t have Kurt. Kurt had gotten away, he’d been lying about everything, and they were leaving without him.  
   
“How many do we have enroute?” he asked. Blaine focused on his voice, ignoring the rest of the commotion.  
   
“They’ve called in the military, sir. And some sort of secret ops, our source didn’t have any information about them other than a general ETA. They’re not taking any chances with this, not after they were driven off earlier.”  
   
“How long do we have?”  
   
“That’s the issue, sir. We’ve lost contact, and our last communication was what I told you five minutes ago, that we have incoming. No timeline given. I think our source may have been made.”  
   
“It was bound to happen. They’re stupid, but they’re not so stupid that they couldn’t realize what us finding their creatures in the middle of nowhere means. How many have we lost?”  
   
“There’s a team of ten missing still, plus the man from yours. I’ve had communication with them, but they may have been too far out to return in time.”  
   
“We’ll leave a transport for them, and get the cargo out immediately. Where’s that container?!” he snapped suddenly. “Do you think we have all night?”  
   
A heavy weight crashed down beside him, and Blaine flinched instinctively, craning his neck around to see a smooth metal surface behind him, and  _oh_. He was the cargo. They were going to put him in a box.  
   
The semi-rational realization was followed by a completely irrational panic. Coordinated movement was still beyond him and the restraints made sure that he couldn’t really put up a fight, but he thrashed when someone touched him, jerking away from grasping hands until there were too many to get away from, and then he was simply lifted and dropped, hitting the wooden inside with a dull thunk.  
   
“Don’t worry,” the man said, leaning over the opening. Blaine sucked in a breath through his nose and tried to lunge at him, but couldn’t get enough leverage to get up. “We will place you right next to your friend, so that you are not separated.” He was still pretending to have Kurt, why would he still be pretending? “I am very sorry for your loss,” and now he was smiling, “but he did not survive his wounds. Maybe you will find solace in the fact that we will gather valuable data from the dissection.” Blaine stared up at him, unable to move, unable to think, he was lying he was lying he had to be lying no no no. “Then again, maybe you will not.”  
   
The lid slid on with a scraping noise that rang through Blaine’s ears, and then he was in the dark.  
   
~*~  
   
Kurt had been stalking the group he’d attacked, following the scent of blood back to them and then creeping at what he hoped was a safe distance, when the one in the lead tapped an earpiece and said “Affirmative.” He then looked back at the rest of them and said, “Double time to the transports, or we’re getting left. They’ve got the one, and the boss says that’s good enough.”  
   
He hadn’t really had a plan until that moment, just hoping that following them would take him back to where he’d be able to hear or smell Blaine, but they had him. They had him, and they could be doing awful things to him, and Kurt wasn’t going to let that happen.  
   
He wasn’t quite sure how to stop it, though. He trailed behind them as they changed course. He’d be shot on sight, probably, and even if he was willing to…stop, he was going to go with stop rather than the more unpleasant alternatives, them from shooting him, he couldn’t. But, what if-  
   
“You hear that, you little shit?” the man running in the back said to the woods. He was nursing a bloody arm, and Kurt felt retroactively vindicated and grossed out that he’d bitten someone so crude. “You’re getting off, for now.”  
   
“Shut up, you idiot,” the one in front said. “It probably crawled off to die. You’re not talking to anyone but us, and we all heard you scream like a woman when it bit you.”  
   
He was silent after that, but Kurt thought that the sound of him running would be masked by their breathing and footfalls, and then he realized what he could do.  
   
He’d been thinking like he was still Kurt, and he was, but he was also superhumanly strong and fast. If he could disguise himself long enough to get to Blaine, they could get out together. The woods were dark, and he could see better than them, and maybe had the physical power to win a one-on-one fight for the first time in his life. He could grab one of them and steal his uniform, and then pretend to belong until he found Blaine. He was an actor, after all, even if he’d have to hide the fact that he was sixty pounds of muscle slighter than everyone else he’d seen. It was for Blaine, and he was alone and scared and in trouble.  
   
Kurt sped up, ready to pounce on the last man in line just as they topped a crest, and stopped dead. They were back to the trucks, and he could smell Blaine again, just traces of him, but that was less important than the fact that the trucks were  _leaving_.  
   
Remembering at the last moment to be quiet, Kurt took off along the road, running as fast as he could, ducking trees and leaping bushes, angling so he was on a collision course. Blaine was on one of those trucks, he  _knew_  he was.  
   
There were three, and they could only go so fast on the gravel, open frame military trucks that were covered in canvas. Kurt kept up with them, considering his chances as he ran, and decided that Blaine would be in the middle truck. As soon as he came out of the woods, though, the driver of the back truck would see him, and Kurt knew that they had radios.  
   
Guessing was stupid, if he only had one try to get it right, and he had no real reason other than a feeling to think that Blaine would be in the middle one. He stopped thinking and just listened.  
   
There were people in the trucks, quite a few of them, their heartbeats almost blending into the sounds of the engine, but underneath them, faint and muffled, there was a slow, heavy beat. Blaine.  
   
He was in the third truck, and he was so quiet, but if Kurt could hear him, maybe he could hear Kurt. “I’m coming,” he whispered, just in case. “And I’m about to jump into a moving truck for you, honey, so you better be grateful.”  
   
He veered out of the woods, sprinting towards the back of the truck. The gravel slid underneath his feet, but he scrabbled his way directly behind the truck, reaching for the steel bar across the back.  
   
There was a shout as someone noticed him, but he was already in, pulling himself up and over and then jumping up and at the nearest person. They’d be shooting at each other if they brought guns into it, and there were only four of them between him and Blaine.  
   
Apparently, though, they didn’t mind shooting at each other. Kurt dropped to the floor of the truck at the first click of a gun, scrambling underneath the hail of bullets to the shooter, tearing the gun out of his hands as he corrected his aim downward and throwing it behind him. The gunman stared down at him, the back of the truck still for a breath despite the sudden lurching of the truck as the driver swerved to a stop.  
   
“Where is he?” Kurt demanded, looking around the boxes stacked in the back. He couldn’t see Blaine, but he could still hear him, and he was losing patience. No one answered, and Kurt bared his teeth, looking as threatening as he could. “Tell me where he is, and I won’t hurt you.”  
   
He could smell blood behind him from the man who’d been caught in the crossfire, the truck was stopping, and the other two men who’d been in the back had their guns up, but he couldn’t see them through the bulk of the man he’d disarmed. He was in trouble.  
   
“Nah, I’m just going to wait,” the man said smugly, but there was a thumping from one of the boxes, and that was all he needed. Kurt brought his knee up as hard as he could, straight into the man’s groin, and launched himself at the other two as he collapsed.  
   
They were already shooting, though.  
   
~*~  
   
Blaine had decided that the man was lying even before the box he was trapped in had been lifted off the ground. He’d seen the Princess Bride. He knew how it worked. Kurt was going to come back and make them all sorry, and even if that cast Blaine as Buttercup, he’d take it.  
   
He was less convinced by the time he’d been loaded onto a truck, wrists aching from being trapped behind him and pulled every time his legs tried to straighten and feet squashed awkwardly against the wall of the box, but he thought that he would know, somehow, if Kurt was dead.  
   
Great love stories didn’t end like this, with one person trapped in a shipping container and the other’s corpse in the one next to it, especially if they’d already beaten death once to be together. They were supposed to get away, and run to Canada, and get fake-married if they couldn’t do it legally, because anything else was just wrong.  
   
Kurt was coming, and maybe it was weird that Blaine was still hopeful when they had a demonstrable record of failure, but he was going to cling to that.  
   
The truck started, vibrating through the floor of the container, and the rattle of the box drowned out nearly all exterior sound as the truck began to move, bouncing over ruts and banging Blaine against the sides. He could hear heartbeats, though, fast and rapid and definitely not Kurt.  
   
He was crying and he didn’t know when he’d started, but he couldn’t stop. He didn’t know what would happen if Kurt didn’t come, and the longer they drove, the less likely it was that he would. Coach Beiste had told them to run away from these people, even Sebastian had warned them, in his own awful way, and now he was bound and muzzled and helpless, anyone could do anything to him, and two weeks ago he’d been in school and his worst fear had been that Kurt wouldn’t love him anymore when he moved away to New York.  
   
Someone shooting dragged him out of his increasingly incoherent thoughts, unmistakeably a lone gun very close to him, and Blaine froze, waiting and wondering and hoping. The truck swerved, the gunfire stopped, and just for an instant it was quiet enough that he could hear Kurt’s voice and heartbeat, so, so close and  _alive_ and  _perfect_. He started struggling again, banging his knees against the side of the container, his hip against the top, anything to make sure Kurt knew he was there and fighting too, except then there was another blast of gunfire, this one heavier and longer.  
   
The truck was stopping, every mechanical noise going quiet, and Blaine heard Kurt’s gasping after the guns stopped, every moment of the relieved laughter of the men who had shot them, the slow  _thud-thud_  of Kurt’s heart turning unsteady, and he screamed. His jaw was still held shut, but he screamed anyway, pouring all his anger and pain and frustration into it, and in answer there was a chorus of bone-chilling howls that silenced even heartbeats for a moment after they stopped.  
   
It wasn’t quiet for long though, voices and gunfire and engines revving filling the void, but the truck wasn’t moving anymore, and all Blaine was listening to was Kurt whimpering and his heart labouring.  
   
The lid of the container slid off slowly, inch by inch until it clattered to the truck floor, and Kurt looked down at him, leaning heavily onto the edge of the container. “Hi,” he whispered, reaching down with one hand and pulling at the straps around Blaine’s face. He was pale and blood-flecked, biting his lip as he moved, and listing heavily to the side despite the fact that he had to sitting to be so low.  
   
“They left the keys in here,” he added. “I’m going to get you out.” One strap came loose, and Kurt carefully pulled the entire muzzle off one-handed, gritting his teeth and dropping it beside his head.  
   
“Kurt?”  
   
“Of course,” he whispered. That hadn’t been what he’d been asking, but the way Kurt’s hands shook as he reached in again with keys was answer enough. “There are werewolves outside,” he added. “I think they’re here to help us. I saw one jumping on the guy who just shot me as soon as he left the truck.”  
   
“You’re hurt,” Blaine said, because he could only say the first thing that popped into his head, apparently. Kurt fumbled the key, blinking heavily, and nodded.  
   
“’s getting worse.” He finally managed to get the key into the lock, the shackles opening with a firm click, and Blaine didn’t waste any time. He pulled his arms around to the front and swung his legs around as he sat up, pulling the keys from Kurt’s lax hand and freeing his ankles.  
   
When the chain clattered to the bottom of the container he reached for Kurt, who lunged for him in a way that seemed half-deliberate, half-inability to hold himself upright, wrapping his arms around his neck and gasping out his breath. Blaine caught him as gently as he could, holding him delicately around the ribcage, and turned his face into Kurt’s.  
   
“Are you okay? You’re not okay,” he said desperately.  
   
“I will be, don’t worry. They put you in a box and they were taking you, I couldn’t let that happen,” Kurt rasped weakly.  
   
“They told me you were dead,” he whispered, spreading his hands wider in sheer relief to encompass as much of Kurt as he could. “I knew you weren’t.”  
   
“I’m sorry,” Kurt whispered, and Blaine could feel him smile against his cheek. “But I’m totally dead. I was doing my exercises, and then this guy knocked on my window and ate me.”  
   
“Sounds like a total jerk,” Blaine said lightly, after a second to catch up to what Kurt was saying.  
   
“Oh, he’s not so bad,” Kurt said. “I love him, and that makes up for a lot. Except for the time he proposed in a wheat field, there’s nothing that makes up for that.”  
   
“Maybe he’ll help you make up something better so you can tell people about it without being embarrassed.” Blaine knew that their privacy was an illusion, that just feet away there were people fighting, and they were going to have to seize a chance to run if they wanted any choice in what happened to them after the fighting was done, but Kurt was limp against him, breathing shallowly, and it seemed like his whisper was the only real thing in the world.  
   
“It’s okay, I didn’t mind as much as I pretended to. He was the most important part.” Kurt shifted slightly, damp patches on his arms and back rubbing against Blaine. His breath was barely a touch against Blaine’s ears, but Blaine didn’t know what to do, what he could do for him.  
   
Blaine settled for moving his hand to Kurt’s bicep and squeezing gently to get his attention back to the present. “Speaking of your boyfriend, you’ve rescued him from the bad guys, but we shouldn’t stay here.”  
   
“Okay. I don’t feel well,” Kurt whispered, and then fell completely loose in Blaine’s arms with a sigh, his head lolling away from Blaine’s.  
   
Blaine tightened his arms instinctively before he realized that was a foolish thing to do to someone who’d been shot, loosening his grip until he was just holding Kurt steady. “Kurt, Kurt, please don’t do this, wake up,” he begged, switching him over to one arm pressing a futile hand to his chest, sticky with blood, but that would be okay, because he’d be fine as soon as he’d fed. Blaine just had to find someone or something or-  
   
Or himself, maybe. He tilted his head back, baring his throat, and lifted Kurt’s head, pressing his mouth against his veins. Kurt didn’t move to bite, his jaw slack and loose, the only hint he was still alive his struggling heartbeat and staggering breathing.  
   
“You recognize that I am going to kill you, yes?”  
   
The man who’d been giving the orders stood at the back of the truck, gun in hand and pointed at them. As soon as he’d finished speaking, he pulled the trigger, the bullet tearing across Blaine’s arm and leaving a burning line of pain.  
   
He twisted, dragging Kurt behind him and mostly out of the line of fire, but he didn’t have time to do anything else because the man was firing a second, a third, a fourth time, and Blaine heard the gun going off before he registered the shots hitting him, the force knocking him forward and down, half on top of Kurt.  
   
The shots stopped, but Blaine didn’t move, couldn’t. Every time he shifted a wave of agony washed over him, and he had nowhere to go. He stayed still as someone hauled themself up into the truck and his thoughts turned fuzzy, expecting another shot to the back of the head and getting a warm hand on his shoulder.  
   
“Long time no see, kid,” a familiar voice said, levering a hand under his chest and pulling him upright. Blaine let go of Kurt, leaving him slumped over his lap instead of dragging him up, but groped for his hand, finding his limp fingers and holding on. “Well, only a few days, really, but a fair bit’s happened on my end and yours.”  
   
He tilted his face up, and if his lungs had been working, he’d have gasped, but it was all he could do to keep his eyes open.  
   
Shannon Beiste smiled down at him. “You two look worse than my cousin after he tried to fight a bull moose in mating season. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that I’m not likely to get bit again, but I was hoping we’d have found you a bit sooner.” She patted him on the head, and he felt very small and tired. “Don’t you worry about a thing, though, it’s all okay now. He’s taken care of.”  
   
 The world spun, turning gray and darker, and Blaine closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see it. He meant to open them again, but everything was calm and quiet and he didn’t know if he could, so he didn’t.  
   
~*~  
   
“There you are.”  
   
The voice prodded at him, someone he knew but didn’t expect to hear, and Kurt slid his eyes open to see Coach Beiste looking down at him. He felt curiously light and surprisingly bullet-hole-free, and when he flicked his tongue out over his lips he tasted blood. Or something that was strangely like it but not quite.  
   
“You’re tasting the new synthetic blood substitute that we’re been developing. Congratulations, Hummel, you’re a successful test patient.”  
   
“In an evil way?” His voice croaked, and he coughed wetly. He was in the back of another moving truck, but this time he was on some sort of bed, and there were no chains involved. That and the fact that there were no guns visible seemed to bode well.  
   
“No, in a you’re-going-home-to-your-family way. You were almost gone by the time we got you out of that truck, and your boyfriend wasn’t much better. Even a vampire can only be shot so many times before their body gives up on ‘em, and they were trying real hard to kill you two.”  
   
“Blaine?” He could hear him, but he couldn’t see him, probably because Coach Beiste was sitting in between them.  
   
“Right there.” She moved out of the way, and Kurt lurched up, nearly knocking himself over in his hurry to get to him. He was lying on another cot, eyes closed and sleeping, but looked mostly unharmed when the bloodstains and holes in his shirt were discounted. Not that Kurt was discounting those.  
   
“Blaine,” he said, kneeling beside him. “ _Blaine_.”  
   
Blaine smiled and reached for him without waking up, so Kurt caught his hand in his and bopped his nose gently with a fingertip. “Wake up so we can talk about not being dead,” he demanded.  
   
“’m awake,” Blaine said drowsily. He came more awake very suddenly, nearly bashing his face into Kurt’s and grabbing at his shoulders. “You’re okay!”  
   
“So are you,” Kurt said, smiling. “Also, we’re not going to be lab rats.”  
   
Blaine’s mouth on his was sudden but not unexpected, an exultant press of lips together as they pulled each other in close. “What happened?” Blaine asked when they broke apart. “Not that I’m complaining, but the last thing I remember is Coach Beiste looking down at me, and I have no idea what actually went on.”  
   
“I called in some favours with some folks I used to work with, reminded them that it might not be in their best interests to have more of their people just up and disappear, even if they aren’t quite your people.”  
   
“So, the werewolves?” Kurt asked, pulling himself up to sit on the bed.  
   
“Yep,” she said brightly. “The same ones that chased you halfway across God’s green earth a couple days ago, even. Pastor O’Brien said to say he was sorry for assuming you were violent offenders. Boy, was he ever embarrassed when he reported in and we told him he’d put the run on some innocent kids.”  
   
Kurt was too busy frowning at the memory of being chased to answer, but Blaine said, “That was good of them.”  
   
“Sure was. We had to make our priority their home base once we got a location for it, but them joining up let us make a two pronged strike so we could rescue you two and shut them pig’s rear ends down for good. As it stands now, former humans don’t have much to fear when they wake up tomorrow, and that’s thanks to you two flushing them out.”  
   
“Lots of people died, though,” Kurt said, averting his eyes from Coach Beiste’s earnest smile. “We found a dead agent earlier tonight. And I know that one of the people I attacked couldn’t have survived.”  
   
“Yep, but that ain’t your fault. We were doing our jobs, and we all know the risks when we signed up, and you were just protecting yourselves. And hey, werewolves don’t die easy, and they’re real good at not killing when they don’t want to. The body count ain’t as high as you think, and it ain’t something for you to worry about either. The important thing is you two and all the people like you being able to live their lives without looking over their shoulder, wondering when they’re going to get found by the people that are the real monsters.”  
   
She stood up, ruffling a hand through Kurt’s hair and then Blaine’s. “There’re clothes in that box there that should fit and are clean. Not up to your usual standards, but no blood. I’m going up front to give you a bit of privacy. We’re creeping up on morning, but you’ve got time to get clean and do whatever before the sun comes up.” She pulled a pack of Wet Wipes off a shelf and tossed them at Blaine. “I’ll see you boys tonight. We’ll have you home before you know it, and then we can talk about what comes next for ya.”  
   
“Wait!” Blaine said. “What about you?”  
   
“What about me?” she asked.  
   
“At Sebastian’s house, you-”  
   
“Oh, that. Let’s just say I’m resourceful, and leave it at that.” She winked at them and pulled open a door in the front of the truck box.  
   
“Or you could tell us how you got away,” Kurt said skeptically.  
   
She paused, thinking for a moment. “Nah. A lady has to have some secrets.” She stepped through, closing the door behind her, and then they were alone.  
   
Kurt immediately leaned over to the crate she’d pointed to. He was sticky and bloody and so were his clothes, and he was absolutely done with being dirty.  
   
“Camo,” he observed, forcing a neutral tone as he pulled out a t-shirt.  
   
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Blaine said with a false sincerity, rubbing his arm and tipping his chin over his shoulder to see them. “I think you can pull it off, though.”  
   
“Of course I can,” Kurt said haughtily. “I was only worried about  _you_.”  
   
“I’m sure I’ll look very handsome dressed as a soldier,” Blaine said indignantly, pressing a wipe to Kurt’s face. Kurt flinched away from the cold, but Blaine was insistent with it. “You’re covered in blood, honey.”  
   
“Give me one, then,” Kurt instructed, groping for the pack of wipes. Blaine pushed it into his hand, and then grabbed his chin, wiping firmly along his cheeks. Kurt pulled one out and started on Blaine’s arms, and they were quiet for several minutes until all their exposed skin was blood free.  
   
Blaine dropped his hands to the hem of Kurt’s shirt first, looking him in the eye as he pulled it up and over his head until it blocked their vision and dropping it onto the pile of used wipes. He ran a fresh wipe over Kurt’s chest and down to the line of his pants, his other hand following it.  
   
“They’re gone,” he whispered as Kurt shivered at his touch. “You were dying, I could hear it happening, and it’s like nothing happened now.” He wiped again, but left his hand pressed against Kurt’s chest, over his heart.  
   
Kurt reached up and wrapped his hand around Blaine’s. “When I heard them say that they had you, I was so scared for you, and I didn’t know how, but I knew I had to get you back. And when they shot me, and they were standing there  _gloating_ , and you were right beside me but I thought that I’d failed you. If they hadn’t come right then and blocked the road, we would’ve... I’ve never been so scared.”  
   
“I’m sorry,” Blaine whispered, and Kurt hadn’t meant it like that, but he didn’t know how to rephrase it.  
   
“Can you take your shirt off?” he asked instead. Blaine nodded, pulling off his own ruined shirt and dropping it beside them. “I just meant that I was worried about you. It wasn’t your fault.” He wiped at Blaine’s chest, taking off most of the blood quickly. “Is there more on your back?”  
   
Blaine nodded jerkily and turned around, revealing dried blood clinging to his neck and tracing down his back, along with fresher blood lower down. “What happened?” Kurt asked, horrified, his hands dropping to his lap.  
   
“I think…I think they used someone as bait, waited for me to feed on him and surrounded me while I was doing it. And then shot me in the neck.”  
   
“Oh god,” Kurt said, heaving. He covered his mouth with his hands in the hopes that it would block out the image his stupid mind conjured of Blaine, limp on the ground with a bloody hole in his neck. “ _Oh god_.”  
   
“Hey, hey,” Blaine said, turning back around and opening his arms for Kurt to lean into him. “It’s okay, it’s over, I’m fine, you’re fine.” He still had a wipe in one of his hands that dragged coldly through the dry blood on his back when he dragged his hands down Kurt’s bare back comfortingly, but Kurt didn’t care.  
   
Kurt pressed the palm of his hand against the back of Blaine’s neck, and he couldn’t stop his inhale from becoming a sob as Blaine rubbed up and down his back, one hand wet and cold and the other cool and damp, whispering nonsense into his hair. Kurt didn’t pull back when he could relax again, pressing himself closer and pulling Blaine in.  
   
“I love you,” he whispered thickly.  
   
“I love you,” Blaine said into his hair, sounding just as teary and nasal as Kurt had. “Please can you help me get the blood off my back now, though? It itches really bad.”  
   
Kurt laughed, a little too open mouthed for someone with his face pressed into his boyfriend’s pecs, but he pulled back before he could inadvertently scratch Blaine with a fang. He retrieved the wipe he’d dropped, swiping carefully until all traces of blood was gone, leaving Blaine’s bare skin.  
   
Kurt dropped a kiss to his shoulder blade. “All clean.” He retrieved a fresh wipe and cleaned his own face and hands again, wiping away the tears and traces of blood and dirt. Blaine leaned over his lap as he did, rummaging through the box of clothes.  
   
“Kurt,” he said urgently. “Kurt, underwear. New underwear.”  
   
Kurt didn’t even think, unbuttoning and tugging off his pants and underwear together, his arms rubbing against Blaine’s chest as he pushed them onto the floor. He’d wrinkled his nose and taken them out of necessity, but Blaine holding up a plastic package of plain briefs made it impossible to ignore the fact that he was wearing Sebastian Smythe’s underwear.  
   
“Oh my god, I am so glad that this whole stupid thing is over.”  
   
“Me too,” Blaine said, staring up at him wide-eyed. “You’re naked.”  
   
“If you think I’m going to wear clothing taken from Sebastian’s dresser for one moment longer than I have to, you’re both wrong and wrong in a weird way,” Kurt said.  
   
“You took his underwear?” Blaine asked, wrinkling his nose.  
   
“I didn’t really have many other options, you know. I didn’t have any to start with.” Kurt paused. “Where do you think your clothes came from? I bet you’re wearing Sebastian’s underwear too.”  
   
 Blaine’s jaw dropped in horror, and a moment of mad scrambling later he was naked too. “I hope they don’t have a camera back here,” he said suddenly, like the thought had just occurred to him. “Do you think they do?”  
   
For a single glorious second, Kurt had been contemplating things that they could do now that they were both naked. The realization that they probably did have a camera on them both destroyed that and was incentive enough to grab the underwear from where Blaine had dropped it, tearing the package open and handing the first pair to Blaine and pulling the second pair over his feet and up.  
   
“Pants,” he said, pulling a pair out and checking the tag. “Well, they’re almost the right size.”  
   
Blaine didn’t bother to stand up to pull them on, the result hanging low on his hips and looking vaguely like an army themed stripper. “I feel like I should be singing Village People.”  
   
“In the navy, you can do most anything…” Kurt sang, trailing off as he realized he didn’t know any other words and finding himself a matching pair of pants shamefacedly.  
   
“Is that the words?” Blaine asked. “I don’t think they are.”  
   
“Me neither,” he admitted. “They’re going to take away my gay card.”  
   
“Don’t worry,” Blaine whispered, leaning over his lap again to find a shirt, his breath tickling against Kurt’s forearm as he looked up at him. “I won’t tell anyone.”  
   
“Mm, you better not,” Kurt said, running his hand up Blaine’s back to his hair and watching him shiver. “I’d have to date girls instead, and then where would you be?”  
   
“Very, very…” Blaine pulled himself upright and onto Kurt’s lap, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and waiting for Kurt to look up at him, “ _very_  sad. I don’t know what I’d do.”  
   
“That’s good,” Kurt whispered, tilting his face up so that their lips were just barely touching. “Because I don’t know what I’d do with a girl either.”  
   
Blaine let out a surprised laugh, pulling back slightly. Kurt leaned up, chasing his lips, but Blaine’s weight pinned him down and he couldn’t reach without his cooperation. “I’m sure you’d figure  _something_ out,” he said, teasingly holding an inch between them. “You’re much too gifted to not.”  
   
Kurt let out a frustrated huff, and Blaine swooped in with a grin, meeting him open-mouthed as he pressed up. Vampire kissing was slightly weird, they both had to be careful to keep their teeth out of it, and Blaine wasn’t as warm as he’d been when they were human, but Kurt felt that it was still very nice. He pulled Blaine’s hips closer to him, bracing himself to lean back with his other hand, and tried to remember that falling backwards would likely end with both of them on the floor.  
   
The truck going over a large bump and bouncing them both onto the floor anyway put an end to kissing, and as they picked themselves up, Kurt carefully adjusted his pants and pretended not to notice Blaine doing the same.  
   
“I’m just going to finish getting dressed,” Blaine said ruefully. Kurt shrugged, leaning over to get a shirt out of the bottom of the box and rolling it up so it wouldn’t mess his hair before remembering that there wasn’t much point to that.  
   
When he turned around, Blaine had pulled back the blanket on the cot. “Coach Beiste said it was almost morning, and I think I can feel the sun coming up, so uh, I guess time to lie down? It’s a bit small, but we’ll both fit. Unless you want to have your own,” he said, gesturing at the cot Kurt had woken up on.  
   
“I appreciate the consideration, but no, I’d prefer having you right with me,” Kurt said. After that night, he’d prefer never having Blaine out of his sight again, but Blaine didn’t need to hear that. Kurt had a feeling he felt the same way.  
   
Blaine slid under the blanket, squirming to the far side and holding the edge up for Kurt to get in.  
   
Once they were settled, Kurt mostly beside but partly on top of Blaine, holding him in place with his arm around his chest, Kurt relaxed, closing his eyes and listening to Blaine’s heartbeat.  
   
“Are you asleep?” Blaine whispered. His fingers rubbed gently over Kurt’s side, just soft enough to not tickle.  
   
“Yes.” The sun was coming up, what had been a quiet touch of sleepiness becoming a stronger urge, even in the completely sealed truck.  
   
“No you’re not,” Blaine said. “If you wanted me to believe you were, you should’ve snored.”  
   
“I don’t snore,” Kurt said indignantly.  
   
“Yeah, you do.” Blaine sounded amused, and Kurt frowned at him.  
   
“Do not.”  
   
“You do, but it’s adorable. Just soft little snores.” Blaine’s arm around him tightened when Kurt tried to pull back so he could scowl where Blaine could see it. “Like a puppy.”  
   
“I am not a puppy, Blaine Anderson.”  
   
“Aw, yes you are. My adorable little puppy,” Blaine crooned. He snuck a hand up to Kurt’s hair, scraping his fingernails against his scalp teasingly.  
   
“Puppy’s going to bite you if you don’t stop that,” Kurt threatened, giving up on escaping to show his fake offense and pressing his cheek back onto Blaine’s chest.  
   
Blaine’s hand stilled instantly, sliding back down to Kurt’s shoulder. “The petting, or the puppy jokes?”  
   
Kurt sighed. “It was the petting, but I’ve just remembered that my hair’s a mess anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”  
   
Blaine’s laugh turned into a yawn, and he switched to stroking over Kurt’s hair instead, smoothing it back down. “I’m falling asleep,” he said drowsily.  
   
“It’s fine,” Kurt murmured, relaxing into sleep. “Everything’s fine. Close your eyes. We’re going home.”  
   
Blaine didn’t answer, his hand slowing and stopping, sliding limply down to Kurt’s neck.  
   
“Goodnight,” Kurt whispered.  
   
~*~  
   
It turned out that going home actually meant going to a government facility where they were thoroughly poked and prodded before being given a clean bill of health. And a certificate of vampirism.  
   
The only thing that kept Blaine from panicking was the fact that Kurt was facing him the entire time. He supposed it also helped that Coach Beiste was standing outside the curtain, keeping up a running commentary, and that halfway through Kurt’s dad threw the curtain open and gathered Kurt up in a tearful hug, but it was mostly Kurt. Blaine carefully didn’t listen to what Kurt and his dad said to each other, but it was impossible to miss how red Mr. Hummel’s eyes were by the time he let go.  
   
They were each handed a manual (seriously, the government had a manual for new vampires) and yet another new set of clothes. Blaine wasn’t sure if the plain grey was a step up from camo, it certainly wasn’t as visually interesting, but the look Kurt gave him when he suggested that was enough to have him into the new clothes in record time.  
   
They had a brief moment with the glee club, those of them that had piled into two cars and followed Kurt’s family anyway, made briefer by the fact that they’d prepared several songs for the occasion. Blaine wouldn’t have minded, but there was barely enough time for him and Kurt to perform one thank-you song before they had to go sit in another office and wait for their paperwork to be processed.  
   
“Okay, boys, there we are,” the burly man behind the desk said, after an eternity of talking. “I just need you to sign here, here and here on all three copies, and you’re officially registered as former humans and under the protection of the Department of Former Humans. Your wrongful death stipends will be automatically deposited into your accounts, though that money won’t last forever, and you are encouraged to find some sort of work.”  
   
“Wrongful death stipends?” Blaine repeated, exchanging a look with Kurt.  
   
“Yes, since your deaths were directly or indirectly caused by a registered former human, department policy is to provide some funds to ease the human/former human transition.” The man pushed his glasses up his nose. “Further information may be found in your manuals. Is there anything else?”  
   
“Um, yes,” Kurt said. “Speaking of the ‘registered former human’ who did this…”  
   
“He is currently being tracked. His actions nearly blew the lid off of everything the Department works to prevent, though thanks to a clever bit of covering up involving blaming Photoshop and media sensationalism, we expect to return to the status quo shortly. He will be punished, you can rest assured of that.”  
   
“How did you cover up the fact that we’re dead but we’re actually not?” Blaine asked. “Isn’t anyone who ever sees us again going to wonder?”  
   
“People are dumb, kid, and you can only go out at night. You’ve got a valid ID with your name and photo on it, a new Social Security, everything. There’ll be gossip, but they won’t prove anything. Read your manuals, go home to your families, finish high school, see the world, whatever you want. Read the manual first, though.”  
   
“Can we get married?” Kurt asked hopefully.  
   
“Sure, if you want. It’ll almost be legal, too, so long as no one looks too close. You’ve got eternity, kids, or until someone manages to shoot you full of holes when there’s no one there to help. Go out and use it.”  
   
Kurt was looking at Blaine, his eyes shining, and Blaine smiled crookedly. So long as Kurt looked at him like that, it was all going to be okay eventually.  
   
“Um, kids?” the official said cautiously. “I hate to spoil the moment, but I’ve got a lot of work to do and I really do need your signatures.”  
   
“Oh, right.”  
   
“Sorry.”  
   
~*~  
   
Three Months Later  
   
“Canada sucks. I can’t believe we were trying so hard to get here,” Kurt said sulkily, sinking down onto an empty bench.  
   
Blaine sat beside him, looking up at the darkened Parliament buildings. “It was your idea.  _I_  was all for Japan, and you’re the one who refused to get on the boat.”  
   
“It’s not my fault we’re a threat to air security and can’t fly. That boat stunk like…I can’t even think of a comparison. Like a stinky boat.” Kurt kicked a pebble across the path sulkily. Blaine resisted the urge to kiss his pout away.  
   
“Well, I guess tourism isn’t really that great when you can’t do anything in the daytime. It’s probably better that we didn’t go to Japan before figuring that out.”  
   
They heard the jogger before they saw her, her heart pounding and breath labouring as she ran past them. “Anyway,” Kurt said, “We should’ve gone to New York. Or found out where Sebastian is serving his sentence and gone to laugh at him.”  
   
“He’s cleaning out septic lines and they gave him a shovel, Kurt. I kind of get the feeling that it wouldn’t end well for anyone.” Kurt wrinkled his nose, and Blaine cringed in almost-sympathy for how bad that had to smell on his sensitive nose. Not quite sympathy, though, not after what he’d done. “Besides, after all that running, I wanted to see Canada too.”  
   
“I was really hoping that it wouldn’t be as totally normal as it is, though, just to make up for all that effort.” They sat quietly for a moment, and then Kurt sighed. “Well, do you want to get out of here and go find something interesting to do?”  
   
“Get capes and scare people with bad Transylvanian accents and mirrors?” Blaine said, knowing that Kurt would say no but hopeful anyway.  
   
“I actually had something a little more one-on-one in mind,” Kurt said pointedly.  
   
“Dancing?” Blaine stood up, offering his hand to Kurt and grinning innocently.  
   
Kurt took it, and Blaine twirled him close and began to hum. “This isn’t what I meant either, but if you’d prefer dancing…”  
   
“We can dance until we die, you and I, we’ll be young forever,” Blaine sang impulsively.  
   
Kurt laughed. “That’s just unsettling.”  
   
“That Katy Perry wrote our anthem?”  
   
“Something tells me she didn’t have vampires in mind when she did, but yes. What  _I_  was thinking, though, was: Let’s go all the way tonight, no regrets, just love.” Kurt stepped back, sliding his hands from Blaine’s waist to his hands. “How about it, semi-legal husband?”  
   
“That’s a mouthful. Is that what we’re calling each other now?”  
   
“Well, keeping in mind that the dead can’t marry and we promised each other forever, it’s fairly accurate.” Kurt blinked slowly and smiled. “We can also just stay here and sing to each other. That’d be fun too.”  
   
Blaine smiled back, his heart lifting, and pulled Kurt back in, clasping one hand and guiding the other to his waist. “I like both. Let’s do both.”  
   
“Oh good,” Kurt said, kissing him lightly. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” He lifted their hands and looked expectantly at Blaine. “Do you know what song I’m thinking of right now?”  
   
He did, of course he did, because talking about their sort-of wedding always reminded them both of the same song. “Satine or Christian?”  
   
“Satine, of course,” Kurt said. “I was actually still thinking of Teenage Dream, but this works too.”  
   
“Mash-up?” Blaine asked.  
   
“Oh god,” Kurt said, and that was all he got out before he was giggling.  
   
“C’mon,” Blaine said, pulling him along in a mockery of a dance. “Seasons may change, now every February, you’ll be my Valentine, Valentine.”  
   
“I love you, I do,” Kurt said, laughing, “but that is the worst mash-up idea ever, and I danced to Crazy in Love and Hair when Mr. Schue came up with it.”  
   
“I love you, too,” Blaine said, stealing the opportunity to kiss Kurt on his still-open mouth. “Good thing I do, or I’d be offended at you tearing down my creative process.”  
   
“Tell me honestly that you had no plans to jump up on that bench at some point during that song, and I’ll apologize.”  
   
“I never  _plan_  to jump on benches,” Blaine said. “It happens as a natural extension of the song.”  
   
“It happens as a natural extension of you enjoying feeling tall,” Kurt said. “Now c’mon, let’s go find some capes and scare the crap out of people.”  
   
“I love you so, so much,” Blaine said, clapping his hands together in excitement. “C’mon, I have an idea.” He took Kurt’s hand again, squeezing tight, and led him down the darkened path. “We’re going to be the best vampires ever.”  
   
“Well, we did start at the bottom and we’ve got nothing but time to get better,” Kurt said dryly, but he squeezed back, smiling softly as they moved on. “‘Best vampires ever’ sounds like a plan.”  
   
~*~  
   
End  
 


End file.
